The Picture Perfect Theft
by Spikey44
Summary: Have no fear of me, my dear, I harbour no designs on your virtue; your chastity is a coin I have no wish to spend. I simply want to look my fill before your innocence is lost and you interest me no more. He spoke and she knew this was no simple seduction.
1. Chapter 1

**The Picture Perfect Theft**

Disclaimer: All known and recognisable names, locations and characters are property of Square-Enix...I'm only playing with them a little bit.

* * *

_If innocence is but a bauble adorning ignorance then theft is a virtue, and all the world is mad._

Penelo did not like Balfonheim.

She did not like the fish smell and the steely gazes of the dockhands and seamen that watched her walk the promenade stalls in search of wares with the look of hungry Lobos in their eyes.

Penelo did not like the Whitecap Tavern either; it offered no safety from lecherous eyes and cold minds.

She did not like the harsh brine gale that blew in from the Naldoa Ocean or the grey smeared clouds that scudded across the hard blue sky; the sun here lacking the baking heat and familiarity of the sun over Dalmasca.

Penelo did not like the eyes of this town that followed her and watched her. Every time the canvas awnings over the shop fronts flapped in the ever-present breeze it sounded to her like wet, fat lips smacking together as she passed underneath.

Lips that wanted to taste her and suck on her and siphon from her all she had before leaving her one of the dried out, ancient before their time, slattern's that glared at her through painted eyes with thrust out hips from the mouths of alleyways.

Penelo would sooner face down a pride of Bandercouerl out on the Steppes than meet the eyes of any man, and even some of the women, here in Balfonheim.

The Couerls would only eat her, after all, but the people here would suck her up and spit her out another empty-souled and cold eyed wretch trapped in a town that hated itself and everyone in it.

So Penelo withdrew into herself, walking with shoulders hunched and head down, eyes to her feet. Her view on the world became that of the blood stains and broken glass littering the boardwalks of the Gallerina and nothing more.

Every day they tarried here for any number of reasons (the new Mist stone was not yet fitted for the Strahl; they lacked the Gil to buy needed provisions, the Princess lacked the courage of her convictions to move on) and everyday Penelo hunched in on herself.

She was not ignorant, two years survival on the edge of destitution in Lowtown had taught her the value of things that held no material worth, therefore she was constantly afraid of the threat, implicit, within this town.

She was not ignorant and innocence was a notion that confused her, but there was something untouched in Penelo that remained even though she had lost so much; she did not want to lose it too…….and she knew that towns like this longed to rob her of all that she had left to lose.

On the one day when things changed Penelo, despite her fear, was not paying attention.

Under the fish-stinking sky and surrounded by the sweat and profanity of vendors crying their wares and the furtive travellers eager to pay and fearful of revealing their Gil purses to the living shadows all around, Penelo did not see danger until it upon her.

''Ello girlie,' a large, sweaty palmed hand curled vicelike around her upper forearm, squeezing down tight.

A mouthful of gold and black broken teeth spread before her as she looked up in panic. A solid beer gut rolled across the thin divide between their two bodies and pressed against her chest; the ripe smell of spoiled onions and something sweet and sickly rose from the man's oozing pores.

Penelo had faced Judge Magisters and fiends whose names she still did not know; she had travelled the known map of Ivalice and stood side to side with the highest born in all Ivalice, but for a moment naked fear robbed her of all sense and all movement.

All she could see was the gristle and bristle, black studded grey, poking from the jowly face, the stench of beer and the wet gleam of those teeth filling her horizon as the man easefully, almost stealthily, began pulling her towards an alley.

'C'mere girlie; Digby seen the ways you been pretendin' not t'notice 'im, and Digby tired o'yer coyness. Yer an' me is goin' t'get acquainted we is.'

Penelo almost recoiled at the foulness of the man; his hot breath dampening her cheeks as she tried to find refuge from the repulsive sight of him by studying the muck beneath her feet; she could not bare to gaze upon the man's shiny broken teeth and his slippery wet lips.

As her mind floundered instinct and hard experience saved Penelo; she forced herself to press up against the impossible mound of the man's body so that she could press her leg between his, biting her tongue on a roil of pure revulsion as she did so.

She could feel the man's fat jaws fall open slightly in a fleshy grin; he opened his legs slightly and thrust his hips, even here in plain sight of a hundred thousand eyes.

As she moved, almost in a trance, Penelo remembered other occasions, Lowtown with men of her own country grown dissolute and twisted with despair, and in the Muthru Bazaar with Imperials who did not recognise her right to refuse, when she had been forced to do this.

In the years of the occupation Vaan had learned to steal but Penelo had learned the harder lesson of how to survive.

Letting her hand pitter-patter down the man's sweat soaked and food stained shirt, stretched to breaking over his lolling gut, Penelo kept her eyes averted and downcast as she almost playfully hooked her left foot around the man's right ankle.

The man chuckled and his belly vibrated with the action as her ticklish fingers found their target; gyrating hips and bulging belly forced themselves on her but Penelo gritted her teeth and held her ground.

She reached for the rising bulge inside the man's revolting trousers and squeezed as hard as she could, giving the handful of pliable flesh against her palm a quick wrench of the wrist for good measure.

The man howled like a stricken Lobo and jerked away. Penelo hooked her foot around his ankle as he tried to break from her and kicked his foot out from under him.

'Ahhh!'

The man fell into the Gambit vendors store with a resounding crash, curses and profanity spilling wetly from his slobbering jaw, but Penelo saw none of it. She was already running back to the relative safety of the Manse where Vaan and the others would be.

So intent on her flight was she that Penelo did not notice the man loitering by the railings of the open panorama facing the ocean outside the Whitecap; the man who had had a perfect view of the entire altercation and had watched the ensuing drama with keen interest.

As Penelo fled in a blur of flying pig-tails and pounding feet, the man flipped open the loose bound notebook he had been holding absently in his hand in case of unexpected inspiration, and pulled a quill pen from the full pouch strung from his belt.

The man chuckled to himself and began to sketch.

* * *

_If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then where lurks lust?_

Reddas' Manse was not the most impressive residence she had ever seen (Ondore's residence in Bhujerba still held the top spot in that regard) but in Penelo's opinion it was sumptuous all the same.

Braziers of fresh smelling herbs dispelled the pervasive scent of brine and fish within the rooms of the Manse and the walls were painted in coral and cream hues, the windows embrasures draped in muslin and pastel shaded cotton, and the furnishings were fine and grand.

Still, Penelo was particularly grateful for the small sashay of peppermint and Galbana Lily that Reddas had given her (a 'nose-gay' he had called it and told she and Ashe that ladies of status should not have to breathe such foul air during their stay) as the scent of spilled fish guts and blood seemed to have seeped into her every mind; inescapable and foul, just like this town seemed to be.

The room Penelo had been allocated (and for the first time she had a room to herself – Penelo had been almost intimidated by the prospect after so long sharing cramped living space with too many other people beneath the streets of Rabanastre) faced the sea and so she did not have to look out at the port or the town she loathed.

Reddas' attendants had provided her with a high-neck white cotton and lace nightgown, which was wearing at that present moment, and it was perhaps the nicest thing she had ever owned (not that she owned it exactly – but Reddas had said she could keep it if she wished – and it would make a change from sleeping in her clothes).

Thus she was simply sitting on the bed (far too big for her alone) brushing out her hair before sleep when a slight creak of floorboards beyond her door drew her attention that way.

As Penelo watched, hairbrush still held aloft and ready, a piece of velum paper was pushed under the minuscule crack between the door and the hard wood floor. A flash of faltering light and shadow and the person on the other side of the door departed without knocking.

Curious Penelo dropped the brush down on the bed and padded over to the door, crouching down in her big, white nightgown to retrieve the piece of paper (perhaps it was a note from one of Reddas' people who thought she had gone to sleep already and did not want to bother her?).

Thinking it no more than that Penelo flipped the paper over and instantly gasped in shock; the paper falling from her fingers to dance across the polished herringbone flooring, face up.

Heart hammering in her chest and mouth dry Penelo could only stare at the marks of ink scratched all in black against the glowing luminance of the white page.

Rough cross-hatch and sharp scoring lines resolved themselves into the impression of a lithe form; an acrobatically svelte female figure caught in a moment of frozen moment of graceful violence. The artist had managed to capture the strength of movement depicted with the violence of the pen-strokes.

The woman (and it was a woman in this picture, not a half-formed girl) was as graceful and fierce as a bandercouerl and her limbs as smooth and guilelessly sensual as a water sylph.

The braids of her hair twisted down from each side of her head in an extension of her body's movement, and her face, turned away from her aggressor, was caught in an expression of odd serenity, eyes closed in concentration as her body worked.

An incident of pathetic ugliness had become, under the deft interpretation of the secret artist, a strangely dangerous, graceful, and erotically charged encounter that made Penelo's hands shake as she snatched up the paper in search of the identity of the artist.

In the bottom right corner of the page, the entire picture in ink taking up no more room than half the middle of the page, two words had been etched sharply, almost illegibly, and then boldly underlined.

'_Virtue Inviolate'. _

* * *

_If the meek should inherit all come the fall, what point is there in standing tall?_

Three days later and Penelo still had no idea who had drawn the picture of her and she had no intention of asking.

After staring at the picture in mute shock for some twenty minutes that night Penelo had eventually, with shaking hands, folded the page in quarters and pushed it into the depths of the pocket of her leather pants suit left waiting on the chair.

She had thought about ripping it up and throwing the pieces out to sea, but something stopped her, a strange fission of excitement and vanity that made her head spin and her blood heat every time she snuck a peak at the picture, it would not let her destroy it.

Having the picture hidden in a little folded square in her pocket gave her courage as she travelled about the port; sometimes she even looked up from the ground to look around her in search of the mysterious roaming artist.

'Come on, Pen, I'm bored out of my mind. Let's go kill something.'

Penelo stared at her best friend for a long moment; she could not count the number of things wrong with that statement, and was just about to tell Vaan that killing things to relieve boredom was not a good idea for any number of reasons, when the pair were joined by a sardonic shadow.

'And thus the first step on the road to tyranny is taken,' Balthier drawled rifle propped against his shoulder, 'we shall have to keep close watch on you from now on, Vaan.'

Vaan frowned, 'Huh?'

Balthier simply shook his head, smirk playing over his closed lips, as he placed his hands firmly on Vaan's shoulders and turned him about face, 'Lead on them, boy, you'll not sate your bloodlust bellyaching around here.'

Vaan perked up as he wriggled free of Balthier, 'If you think it's such a bad idea how come you're coming with us?' he challenged, because Vaan was always trying to prove something to Balthier, though Penelo dreaded to think precisely what that was.

'Who said I'm the one following you?' Balthier retorted archly, 'I have my gun already loaded; a casual observer might surmise from that, that you are merely following my chain of thought.'

Both Vaan and Penelo took time to wade through the meaning of this statement as the two young people were herded through the port from the manse by the slightly older in years and vastly older in experience, sky pirate.

Strangely travelling in Balthier's slipstream Penelo felt herself uncoil from her habitual hunch and look straight ahead unabashed; though she mostly stared at the complex buckles, clasps and strings fastening the pirate's vest at the back.

Penelo did not have any huge desire to 'sate her bloodlust' (she was not sure she had any to begin with) but she would not pass up the opportunity to escape the confines of the port.

Even the windswept, rain savaged rugged clefts of the Cerobi Steppes were preferable to another minute trapped in the Port of Balfonheim.

Still roughly an hour later, finding herself surrounded by a pack of silver lobo with nothing to defend her but an old, battered and inept Gokuu pole she rather thought that she had been too hasty about Balfonheim.

It turned out, in retrospect, that she had less want to be eaten by baying fiends than she did to be molested by seaman and common crooks, after all.

A quick look over her shoulder as she swung up her pole and thrust it into the chest of one snapping Lobo whose jaws came too close to her ankle, told Penelo that no help would be forthcoming from the men.

Vaan had accidentally thrown a stone at a sleeping Ring Wyrm (don't ask) and now he and Balthier were struggling with gun and Deathbringer sword to convince the beast that they were not easy meat for the taking.

Thus Penelo was on her own with the supposedly lesser threat of seven Lobos who wished to put, young Dalmascan orphan on their personal menu.

Although she had strength to lift the Gokuu pole for arcing swings and plunging pummel movements when she absolutely had too, for the most part Penelo used the pole as a jumping post; twisting and writhing like a bolt of lightening made flesh.

Slamming the pole into the rocky, craggy ground of the Steppe, Penelo braced with her arms and arched her body perpendicular in the air, legs scissoring out in a lethal kick that caught one Lobo by the neck between her knees.

She flipped the beast in the air and heard the distinctive crack as the creature's neck snapped between her thighs. Releasing the dead fiend with her legs she had no time to see the broken creature fall before turning to repeat the process on yet another razor-jawed Lobo.

Penelo fought with the single-minded determination of someone who knows what death looks like and has felt its breath on the back of her neck for the last two years. Blood, hot and scolding, splashed over her cheek; she did not know if it was hers or Lobo and in the heat of the moment she did not care.

Reality had narrowed down to the singing of her rapid pulse in her ears, the gasping wrench of not enough air drawing in and whistling out of her lungs and the screaming of tired muscles and sinew as she kicked, pivoted, pirouetted, punched and almost danced her way through the baying pack of Lobo.

When the final Lobo fell she fell with it, collapsing to her knees in a hot, panting, exhausted heap; the long grasses, coarse and sharp-edged, scratched and tickled at her bare legs as she scrubbed at the drying blood painting one side of her face.

The thunder of running feet, undisciplined and anxious, caused her to lift her eyes from the study of her own scratched and bloody thighs.

'Penelo!'

Vaan stood before her, bloody, battered, sword undrawn and dripping Wyrm blood, and eyes wide and bright as he looked about him at the scattered Lobo bodies arrayed hither and thither in the grasses.

'Wow, Pen, nice work.'

Penelo had no time to so much as come up with a scathing retort as Vaan leaned forward and hauled her to her feet. As he did so hanks of her hair, come free from her right side braid, fell across her face.

'Well, well,' Balthier approached gun propped on shoulder and looking smoothly unruffled despite the ripped sleeve of his white shirt from the Wyrm fight. He stopped before the Lobo with the broken neck and toed the beast incuriously, 'Next time I'll send you on your way, Vaan, and let your girl handle the majority of the fighting.'

Vaan immediately opened his mouth to announce loudly that he was the one who finally despatched the Wyrm and _he_ didn't hide in the background with a gun, and Penelo opened her mouth to point out strenuously that she was not 'Vaan's girl'.

Balthier silenced them both when his closed lips curled into a darkly amused smirk and he fixed heavy-lidded eyes on Penelo, 'Quite the little savage, aren't you my dear?'

Both Penelo and Vaan were struck dumb with surprise when Balthier shook free his handkerchief (though Penelo wondered where he had pulled it from – it seemed to simply materialise from thin air) and stepped forward to lift Penelo's chin with one long-fingered hand before wiping the blood from her cheek with the square of pristine white cotton.

'There now; let the illusion be unspoiled,' he murmured softly, dark eyes watching his hand, and not her face, as he pushed the soiled handkerchief into Penelo's unresisting hand and briskly turned on his heel back towards Balfonheim.

'Let's be off, shall we, children? I think we've had our fill of needless death and destruction for one day, hmm?'

Vaan and Penelo were left staring blankly at each other, Penelo still numbly holding onto the handkerchief, as Balthier departed.

'What was that about?'

Vaan demanded almost accusingly. Penelo could only shake her head in mute confusion; in nearly eight months acquaintance she could count on one hand the number of times Balthier had even deigned notice to her existence as an individual and not an appendage of Vaan's, let alone paid her a compliment -and as for calling her 'my dear' – well she had no idea what to make of that.

With nothing further to do or say both Penelo and Vaan ran to catch up with Balthier. Yet, before entering the Port once more, Penelo dug in her pocket for her nose-gay and instead felt the crisp edges of the picture. She jerked her fingers away from the graze of the paper, noticing that the velum had sliced her finger.

As the scent of rotting fish and vomit threatened to overwhelm her, Penelo covered her mouth and nose with Balthier's handkerchief instead. The cloth smelled of her blood and gun smoke and the combination made her shiver for some reason.

* * *

_The greedy man wants what he cannot have; the civilised man takes what he does not need, and the enlightened man simply takes his fill where he wills. _

Hours later Penelo was lightly dozing in her bed at the Manse when yet again she heard the creak of floorboards outside her room and something thin and white and square slipped under the crack between floor and door.

Her heart jumped to her throat as she strained her hearing for the tell-tale sound of the footsteps, swift and confident, retreating down the corridor. She leapt from her bed and ran, bare foot, across the room wrenching open the door of her room and jumping out into the quiet hallway.

There was no one there.

The hallway, painted pale cream with turquoise wainscoting and tourmaline and Peridot tiled flooring, was still and peaceful. The sighing ocean rustled the curtains of the balcony at the end of the hall and Penelo caught the faint whisper of movement from the room adjacent to her own, currently occupied by Ashe.

There was no evidence of the mysterious artist's presence.

Coming back into her own room Penelo closed, locked the door and leaned against it as she regarded the piece of white velum, glowing in the shadows of her unlit room, with open suspicion.

Her heart jumped and jerked like a bird in the cage of her chest and she felt sick with excitement; caught between two opposing and equally irrational impulses, Penelo was almost sweating with anticipation.

She clenched her thighs together as she quivered against the doorway, unable to decide whether she feared what might be upon the page or was in fact in a fever to see herself captured in ink once more.

Eventually curiosity won out and she crouched by the paper and flipped the crisp white square over.

She thought she had prepared herself for what she might see but she was wrong.

This picture was as self-contained as the last, taking up only the heart of the page and not so much as straying towards the margins, but within that heavy, fast, almost violent, mesh and swirl of obsidian inked lines a whirlwind of poetic violence had been distilled into one, haunting image.

A lithesome savage with flush cheeks and strangely sweet eyes, her hair half free of its restraints and tangling in cords and vines across her face, was frozen in ink in a pose of near impossible agility.

Body twisted and sinuous as corded steel with a savage beast caught, trapped and broken, tongue lolling and eyes bulging, within the lock of sinuous thighs, the woman in the picture was the very image of raw, sensual violence.

Something inside Penelo felt weak and slipped free like liquid heat to see this wild creature wearing such a close likeness to her own face.

'_Savagery Incarnate.' _

Realisation, belated and sudden, descended as Penelo picked out the tight scrawl in the bottom right hand corner of the page.

Anyone could have drawn her in the crowd Gallerina promenade three days ago, but only two people could have witnessed her fight with the Lobo, and of those two people Penelo knew, with absolute conviction, that Vaan did not even possess the knowledge of, let alone was able to spell, the word 'incarnate.'

Heart tripping on her tongue and cheeks scolded with heat Penelo dropped gracelessly onto her backside on the cold floorboards of her borrowed room. She stared down at the picture on the floor.

'Balthier…..' she breathed, '…it was you?'

But, a little dumbfounded voice in Penelo's mind whispered, why was _he_ drawing pictures of _her_?


	2. Chapter 2

_The value of a moment is measured in the state of one's mind; all things have their charms and all charms are finite._

Finally all possible distractions and delays had been exhausted and all of a sudden, as far as Penelo was concerned in any rate, they were all off across the ocean to some strange building stuck on the edge of a tremendous waterfall in the middle of Jagd and water.

Vaguely, as she strapped herself into her seat in the Strahl, Penelo wondered what exactly a 'Pharos' was?

An atmosphere of tense excitement filled the tight confines of the Strahl's cabin as everyone took their seats and Reddas was forced to sit on the floor at the back and hold on because there was not the spare seating.

Penelo, who had taken to watching Balthier like a hawk, caught the slight smirk on his face at Reddas' discomfort. Those two did not like each other, that was for certain.

Balthier…….

It had been exactly one day and one night since the second picture had been shoved under her door and she was now loaded down with two quartered pieces of paper shoved into the depths of her pockets and too many questions swimming about in her head, than could be good for her.

Penelo supposed that there were only so many reasons a man would sketch pictures of a girl (strange, and strangely flattering, pictures at that) and send them secretly to her, but Penelo just could not fathom that Balthier had any interest in 'wooing' her.

Penelo was not sure she would know a 'wooing' if it slapped her in the face, but then such violence would probably not be very in keeping with wooing in any regard.

Turning her attention back to the sky pirate Penelo tried not to frown. He barely even looked at her during their day to day existence, and apart from their first conversation about the handkerchief and the 'my dear' comment in Cerobi he mostly disdained from talking to her also.

If it wasn't for the fact that Vaan had not the higher brain function to correctly wield a pen and that Penelo could not countenance the notion of a mysterious, invisible artistic stalker, she would think it too unlikely that Balthier was really the man responsible for the pictures in her pockets.

Penelo, caught up in her brooding, almost jumped out of her seat, and the safety belt strapped across her body cut into her neck with the movement, when an over-excited Vaan, eyes gleaming with a manic glee, reached across to squeeze her bare knee and pointed out of one of the port-hole windows.

'Pen, pay attention, or you'll miss it. I mean, when are we ever going to fly over an ocean again, huh?'

He had a point and Penelo (reluctantly) stopped thinking about the unresponsive Balthier to peer out of the windows at the brilliant cerulean, white surf tipped, ocean running seemingly forever underneath the Strahl.

Away from the stain of Balfonheim Port the ocean was a faultless blue the same hue as the sky and the white tipped waves almost looked like tiny scudding clouds. Penelo could almost imagine that the sea was the sky and the sky the sea and that nothing existed to separate the two.

It made her feel both exhilarated and a little sick, and she looked away from the porthole window.

Almost involuntarily Penelo's eyes gravitated back to the front and the back of the pilot's chair where just the honey brown top of Balthier's head was visible.

Penelo regretted picking her usual seat on the pilot's side behind Basch as it meant that, while as she could catch a glimpse of Fran's profile now and then (and she had never realised that Fran's nose was so snub and turned up at the end), she was completely unable to see anything of Balthier's face.

Still it seemed impossible that he could be watching her (let alone drawing anything at all) while piloting the Strahl.

'We make our approach,'

Fran's voice broke into the hush that had fallen on the cabin some hours later and Penelo stirred herself from a light doze.

Immediately she sat up straighter in her chair when she saw the huge reddish, tan tower, with the ellipse carven iris design at the top, swathed in cloud and Mist, that stood on the very brink of a staggering, cascading waterfall.

'Oooh,' Penelo gasped, clasping her hands together in delight, 'it's so beautiful. How did anyone build anything so big in a place like this?'

'Not by mortal hands was this monolith crafted,' Reddas intoned from the back and Penelo couldn't help but wonder if he was criticising her in some way for finding something built by Occuria (which she guessed was what he meant) to be beautiful?

'Hmm, megalomaniacal demagogues aside, at least these Occuria have a sense of style.'

Balthier drawled from the front as he banked the Strahl to circle around the upper reaches of the Pharos, 'Still it's a shame whoever built this did not have the foresight to put in an airship berth; looks like we'll have some climbing ahead of us.'

Ashe leaned forward from the seat directly behind Fran, 'How close can you land us?'

'Not very,' Balthier sighed as he pulled the Strahl away from the massive Pharos and skirted the edges of the pinnacle of rock that the Pharos seemed to have been hewn from, 'the Ridorana was not built with airships in mind so I will have to find a safe place to moor up and we will have to shimmy down the rope ladder to reach solid ground.'

Ashe remained leaning forward looking at Balthier intently for a moment before she sighed herself, frowning slightly, and settled back in her seat.

Even Ashe knew better than to argue with Balthier when it came to flying, and landing, the Strahl.

However Reddas apparently did not, as, two minutes later, when Balthier was still idly circling the loveliness of the tiered paved Ridorana with its odd trees and carven walls, Reddas grunted with annoyance, 'By the Gods man, you have made two passes already. Back yonder was a perfectly serviceable mooring point; this procrastination serves no practical purpose.'

Balthier did not answer, but Penelo saw Vaan roll his eyes and shake his head muttering something along the lines of 'now he's gone and done it,' as suddenly the Strahl banked sharply to the starboard side and began to gain altitude.

Reddas came up through the aisle between seats, frowning, 'This pettiness is unbecoming. I merely offered assistance.'

Fran glanced sideways towards Balthier and then inclined her had back towards Reddas, 'A sudden surge in air currents necessitated our gaining altitude; we move to set down now.'

Another sidelong glance to Balthier who sighed and moved the Strahl into position for a docking; no one in the cabin was fooled however, despite Fran's attempt to save face. Balthier had acted out of pure petty annoyance and once again Penelo wondered why he disliked Reddas so much.

Still she didn't have long to think on it as it finally dawned on her what Balthier had said to Ashe before…..oh gods she hated having to climb down the rope ladder from the Strahl's hull. She was always petrified she'd fall to her death if a stiff breeze blew up from nowhere.

'Can't I just stay up here?'

Penelo asked no one in particular as she looked down at the ground as Fran unfurled the rope ladder and the stiff ocean breeze blasted the loose tendrils of hair from her face.

Vaan glanced at her, 'Penelo you've done this plenty of times, why are you still scared?'

Penelo glared at him, 'Because I could still fall and break every bone in my body this time; it doesn't matter how many times I've done it before, it will only take one mistake.' she snapped and a rich chuckle from behind her back made her jump and turn about.

Balthier crouched just behind her and met her startled eyes with his own hooded gaze, one side of his closed lipped mouth curled up in amusement, 'You won't break _every_ bone in your body; at least I didn't the last time I fell from this hatch.'

'_You_ fell?' Vaan gaped, speaking for Penelo as across the hatch, and the howling wind ripping at the edges of the hull, Ashe herself lifted her head from watching Basch and Reddas' descent to stare at Balthier in surprise.

Balthier cocked his head in ironic acknowledgement, 'Fall, or be pushed, or take a flying leap, it is all much of a muchness when one hits rock bottom.'

'I am amazed that you'd admit to being less than perfect, Pirate.' Ashe teased with a raised eyebrow and a rather provocative look that for some reason made Penelo feel just slightly annoyed.

The other side of Balthier's mouth curved up in an almost genuine smile as he met that look head on, 'Perfection bores me; though I will say in my defence that I am nigh infallible either in flight or with two feet solid on the ground; it is just the transition betwixt and between that gives me occasional grief.'

Ashe rolled her eyes at this arrogant assertion and swung one leg down into the empty air of the hatch, twisting her body to begin her descent, 'Don't worry Pirate, if you should fall I've no doubt Reddas will rush to your rescue.'

Balthier chuckled as Ashe's head slid out of sight and Penelo found herself almost frantically wondering if the Princess had been receiving secret sketches too? The thought that she might not be the only one Balthier sketched somehow made Penelo's insides squirm, and the feel of the sketches, folded corners digging into her flesh, suddenly became uncomfortable.

'You next Vaan, then Penelo can follow fast after you and Fran and I will bring up the rear.'

Balthier waved both Vaan and Penelo closer to the hatch and there was nothing for it but to grit her teeth and get ready to descend.

After Vaan had already scampered down the first seven or eight rungs of the ladder Penelo sucked in a breath and, with Fran's steady hand assisting, lowered her lower body into the empty air, feet desperately questing for the first rung of the ladder.

As Penelo began to climb she looked upward as a way of avoiding looking down towards the ground many feet below or outward towards the thunder of the waterfall. Balthier and Fran crouched at the hatch, Fran swinging one leg over to begin her own descent.

It might have been an illusion, or a trick of the light, or even a gesture not meant for Penelo at all, but it seemed to her that Balthier caught her eye and actually _winked_ at her before her view of him was obscured by Fran's limber frame clambering down the ladder after her.

Once they were all on solid ground Penelo had more pressing worries than the prospect of Balthier's possible flirtation and her own (confusing) response to the possibility. Instead she had to keep her wits about her against Cassie's and their foul breath and tentacles and the Mantis like creatures that roamed the Ridorana.

At least, that is, until they approached the shadow of the Pharos and Balthier spoke up, glancing back at where the Strahl hovered in the air, tethered by its anchor in the distance.

'Vaan if anything should happen, you're taking the Strahl.'

Both Penelo and Vaan were stopped in their tracks by that out of the blue statement and when Vaan demanded to know what he meant Balthier merely smiled thinly with closed lips and made some strange comment about the leading man maybe needing to do something heroic.

Inexplicably, because the gods knew Penelo was used to being confused and perplexed by Balthier, just as all the party was, she found her heart in her throat at the thought that something 'should happen' to him.

Although, of course, the comment had not been made to her and really had nothing to do with her at all (Balthier had not said he would leave the Strahl to Vaan _and_ Penelo, after all) she still found herself in a quandary.

Not only was Balthier drawing (seemingly) secret pictures of her but now he was making suicidal statements as well?

Motivated by the strangeness in the air (so still and crisp, despite the distant thunder of the waterfall) and by the fact that Balthier was keeping to the rear of the party, where Penelo habitually remained, as far from Reddas as he could get, Penelo found the courage to sidle up to him in the late afternoon.

'…..Um, Balthier?'

'Hmm?' the man seemed to almost jump in surprise where he had been standing peering intently at a fallen down wall covered in lichen and engraved with worn and ancient runes, 'Hmm, oh, I did not see you there.'

'Oh….um, sorry,' it was not heartening at all that she had been dogging his shadow for the last half an hour, and had even cast healing spells on him when they encountered fiends, but it now appeared that he hadn't even known she was there.

In fact, she mused, it was actually a little insulting.

Still Penelo would persevere, 'Umm, Balthier I wanted to talk to you….' she stammered, clasping and unclasping her hands as she struggled to get the words out. She was not a shy person really but Balthier was not an easy person to talk to either.

'Oh? About what pray tell?'

Something in the almost mocking lilt in his voice suggested that he knew exactly what she wanted to talk about (but then he had to know she'd figure it out eventually, right?) but he did not bother to look at her as he tried to wipe the brilliant green moss from the gray stone work and traced a fingertip over the faint carvings revealed.

Penelo knew she was blushing and was therefore quite glad Balthier wasn't bothering to look at her, and that the others were up ahead at the doors of the Pharos (Ashe and Reddas seemed to be arguing and Fran was talking and gesturing to something written on the wall by the big doors) because she was embarrassed enough already.

'Umm….I wanted to ask you why you were, um, well, why you drew those pictures of me.'

Balthier straightened up from his study of the wall and glanced at her briefly as he wiped off his hands, 'I see.'

Penelo blinked at him blushing so furiously her ears were hot. What did he see? What did that mean?

A curl of a closed lipped smile spread slowly across his face as he watched her flush from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair. His heavy-lidded almost sleepy eyes (bedroom eyes – the term popping into Penelo's head unbidden and making the burn of her humiliation all the worse) regarded her from some vast and cynical distance.

'Have no fear of me, my dear,' he murmured watching her with those hooded eyes, 'I harbour no designs on your virtue; your chastity is a coin I have no wish to spend.'

Penelo almost flinched back as he brutally went to the root of her fears and barely formed hopes and crushed them with honeyed disdain, 'Wha…..?'

Balthier shrugged callously disregarding her mortification even as he tracked its every expression across her face, 'I simply want to look my fill before your innocence is lost and you interest me no more.'

'L…look your fill?' Tears almost prickled her eyes. She was horrified he could be so cruel to her. She might not have been worthy of conversation the way Ashe was, but she had thought he at least liked her a little and would respect her enough to treat her with dignity.

Balthier merely shrugged again and adopted a brisk, businesslike tone, 'I don't profess myself skilled with pen and brush but I,' he paused as if to consider his next words, pursing his closed lips thoughtfully, '_enjoy_ capturing scenes of unusual beauty where I find them, and _you_ caught my eye a few times. Still it is a meaningless thing all in all.'

'What….but…?'

_Unusual beauty….you caught my eye._

Her mind fell upon those disparate words tossed so easily toward her the way she had once upon a time, before the advent of Migelo's kindness, fallen upon the scraps of food discarded upon the floor by passing Imperials. She was ravenous for a compliment from this arrogant pirate just as she had once known gut-churning hunger in truth.

What had happened to her to make this happen; how could sketches in ink do such a thing to her?

Balthier did not let her gather her thoughts, or kick him, or burst into tears, or any of the other things she might have done. Instead he brushed by her and walked swiftly up the winding path towards the rest of the party.

Penelo was left confused, faintly insulted, and totally undone. Yet she had no choice but to swallow all that down and hurry after him, afraid the party might leave her all alone out here on the lonely Ridorana if she didn't.

* * *

_Scratch a cynic and you'll find they bleed disappointment. Scratch an optimist and you'll find they do not bleed at all, having yet to learn what disappointment is. Scratch a realist and you'll find they merely bleed….it is the nature of the beast. _

The inside of the Pharos was a wonder.

Penelo forgot all her cares as she ran the full circumference of the swirling upward flowing column of water that rose up into the heights of the Pharos above. She had never seen anything more magical in a world full of everyday Magicks.

She did not even care when the spray from the tower of water soaked her clothes and threaded her hair with moisture. She dragged Vaan with her around and around the central area of the bottom of the Pharos so she could see the water fountain from every angle.

Her mood lifted with the direction of the water; soaring. It was just so lovely.

Even Ashe's insistence that they explore the inner chambers of the lower floor, where there was bound to be all manner of fiends, did not ruin her happy mood; though she was pleased when it was suggested that she stay behind and guard their packs in the safety of the main chamber.

Free in her own company Penelo bounded over to the water swirl again and reached out as far over the railing as she could get without falling, to stretch her fingers into the upward spray.

'Impressive isn't it?'

She almost fell backwards onto her backside as she jerked away from the railing in fright; she had thought herself alone.

'What are _you_ doing here?'

The words were out of her mouth before she could think about it and she immediately clamped down on her tongue, her hands lacing together nervously as Balthier, reclining on one elbow on the steps leading to the right-hand side warren of chambers, merely chuckled.

'I am looking for Black Orbs,' he drawled disinterestedly and she noticed that a notebook lay open across his lap and he twiddled a pen in the fingers of his free hand.

Penelo, on edge because of the notebook and still a little stung by his words to her earlier, was feeling bold enough to be tart with him, 'You do not seem to be looking very hard. There are no Black Orbs here.'

His mouth curled up at the corner in a tight lipped crooked smile. It occurred to Penelo that she had never seen his teeth. He always, always, smiled with closed lips.

'So it appears, but I remain hopeful all the same.'

This realisation struck Penelo to the core as she remembered her revulsion of the blackened gold filling the man's mouth in Balfonheim, the man who would have taken from her that which she intended to never give away.

Penelo unfastened her hands and balled her fists at her sides instead, 'I will not let you draw me anymore.'

He quirked an eyebrow, looking her up and down ironically, 'And how do you intend to stop me, hmm?'

This stopped Penelo in her mental tracks: how did she hope to stop him? She had always been a little intimidated by the sharp-tongued, impatient, self-assured sky pirate and not a little suspicious of his motives, truth be told. Now she found herself almost afraid of him for some obscure reason.

'It's my face. You are stealing my image,' she stammered, the accusation simply popping, fully formed, out of her mouth.

Balthier was watching her keenly now as he sat up from his lazy recline, 'Am I? That's a novel way of looking at things; quite interesting. Still, does anyone truly own their own image when anyone, stranger or friend, might look on it?'

Penelo decided that she could not compete in a debate with Balthier and instead held her position with stubborn insistence, feeling vulnerable and small with her back to the roaring fountain and facing a man who was so much more knowledgeable than she about seemingly everything.

'Don't do it any more Balthier. I'm not a….a pretty curiosity for you to amuse yourself with.'

His smile vanished, 'Did I say you were?'

Penelo stepped forward, cheeks hot and hands clenched. She nodded vigorously, '_I simply want to look my fill before your innocence is lost and you interest me no more. _Those are your words. I know what you meant and I won't let you…._use _me like that even if all you do is draw some picture when you're bored.'

Somehow she found herself standing right before Balthier who looked up at her with shaded eyes as she quivered with hurt above him, 'Well, well, brave as well, who would have guessed?'

Penelo turned away, angry and feeling foolish; how could she expect a man like him to understand that she was more than just a silly girl, with a ready smile and pig-tails. She had never convinced Vaan or Migelo or anyone at home of that, so why would _he_ care to listen?

His hand reached out and caught her wrist stopping her from running away, 'Perhaps these sketches are a compliment and not the lechery you seem to think they are, hmm? Perhaps I only draw what I hold in esteem. Had you considered that, Penelo?'

She turned to face him, mouth forming a perfect 'O' of surprise. She wondered if she had ever heard him call her by name before, or look so serious while speaking with her.

'A compliment?'

He shrugged, letting go of her and flipping the notebook about to show her the half-complete sketch of a lithe girl dancing in a joyous spray of water vapour, 'If I am going to take the time to create something, I shall jolly well make sure I draw something of value, or there is little point, wouldn't you agree?'

Penelo wrung her hands hopelessly, captured by the picture. It was still only a few scratched lines of ink but already she could see that it was a portrait of her face, in profile, and her arms outreaching for the water. The joy within the inked Penelo's face was beautiful and it did not seem quite possible that he could see that within _her_.

'I don't like you drawing me in secret. It makes me uncomfortable, like I am being watched from shadow.'

Penelo admitted, still mesmerised by the half-formed picture. It was intoxicating and strange that someone would take the time to _notice _her, let alone make something so pretty from her own silly actions.

'Yet, I have no wish to stop drawing you; you are a……engaging…..muse and I have not felt so inspired in some time.'

'Oh….I….thank you,' her fingers twisted and writhed in a knotted mesh as she wriggled in a mix of acute discomfort and a certain, flattered, pride.

Balthier studied her thoughtfully, 'A compromise, perhaps?'

'Huh?' and she was mortified to find Vaan's most oft used exclamation of ignorance slip from her lips.

Balthier's lips twitched at the slip and subsequent blush that flooded her cheeks, 'Hmm. I will promise not to sketch you behind your back, if you promise to pose for me once we reach friendlier confines. How does that sound?'

Penelo's chest squeezed down as if a huge hand was crushing all the air from her, '_Pose_ for you?'

Balthier flapped a hand in dismissal of her sudden panic, 'As I said, I have no desire to threaten your modesty. I merely want to try my hand at a composition piece and Fran flatly refuses to sit for me at all.'

'You… you would paint my portrait?'

'Hmm, yes; you can have the finished article once I am done. I have no interest in the product, only the process. Do we have a deal?'

He had promised her he was not trying to seduce her and he certainly did not seem to have lechery in mind (he flirted much more overtly with Ashe, after all) so really it did not seem so bad all in all. In fact she was rather flattered.

It occurred to her that in all likelihood no one would ever offer to paint her ever again, she simply wasn't that important and never would be.

Balthier had extended his hand, ready to shake on the deal, and almost in trance Penelo reached out for that hand, 'Alright, I guess I can pose for you, Balthier.'

His grip was firm and commanding, Penelo's limp and unsure, as he shook her hand briskly, 'Marvellous,' he jumped nimbly to his feet still grasping her hand, 'I have no doubt that we shall make magnificent art together, my dear.'

Then, with only a wicked smirk to her in parting, he left the notebook discarded on the stone step and disappeared back into the passages of the Pharos.


	3. Chapter 3

_There is no greater corruption than beauty or any evil more insidious than a comely face. Beauty makes villains of us all; heedless to all else in pursuit of a false truth. _

Penelo was trying really hard not to cry.

Her eyes still hurt from the brilliant coruscating tongues of fire and shards of light in shades of red and orange and luminous greens and violent purples that had chased the Strahl across the sky as the Sun-Cryst ruptured and the Pharos tumbled.

Penelo knew fear. She knew what it was to expect death; she remembered hiding in the cupboard under the stairs of her old home after the Imperial army swarmed Rabanastre.

She remembered sitting knees drawn up under her chin and eyes squeezed shut against the close darkness of the stuffy cupboard, trying not to breathe, and expecting at any moment to be pulled out of her womb-like dark space into the harsh light of day by steel plated men with harsh voices and even harsher intentions.

She remembered that she had screamed like a child, expecting that one sound to be the last she ever uttered, when the cupboard door opened and three people crowded into her hiding place with her; she remembered the hand clapping around her mouth as a small sobbing child was dumped into her lap.

She remembered Vaan's voice, hissing in a hoarse whisper of almost threatening rage, as he told her to shut up because the soldiers were everywhere. She remembered how the fear was both lessened and worsened unbearably when she realised that Vaan, Kytes and Filo were here with her; they would share the same fate, whatever that might be.

Yes, Penelo knew what fear was. The memory of that long night hidden in a cupboard listening to the muffled sounds of screams and sobbing and the thundering rapport of Imperial Hoplite rifle fire still woke her up at night with a scream lodged in her throat.

This was different; Penelo did not pretend to understand all that had happened at the top of the Pharos, but she knew that for all intents and purposes she was safe now. Everyone she cared about had escaped the Pharos (she would mourn Reddas later, when she had the space and time to take stock of all that had been lost and won).

There was no reason (now) for her to feel almost hollow with terror; no reason that her heart should be thundering in the flimsy cage of her chest like a captured Dreamhare hammering at a bone trap.

Two years of living in spite of an occupying army, which was doing its level best to kill her and all the indigenous populace of Dalmasca through a hundred thousand negligent cruelties, and Penelo had learned to live for the moment; you survived or you died that was all.

For all Rabanastrans there was but one unspoken rule since the occupation. If you were lucky enough to live through the day you did not waste your time worrying about tomorrow, or how close you came to dying yesterday; it would break you if you did.

Maybe, Penelo thought, as she stared up at the ceiling of her borrowed room in Reddas Manse, (….or the manse that formerly belonged to Reddas – and here comes the grief, sharp toothed and bright as broken glass), maybe it was the fact that it wasn't her life she feared for, that made it so much worse tonight.

Another scream seared through the distance of rooms and walls and empty air from one side of the Manse to the other and Penelo surged up in bed in fright; heart constricting in her chest.

_Fran!_

The six of them, all those who had been through so much already and yet were still mostly strangers to each other, had all escaped the destruction of the Pharos and yet none had come away unscathed.

Penelo remembered how monstrously terrifying it had been to see Fran, who was always so calm and serene, retch blood and thrash and scream in the fold out bunk of the Strahl as Mist sickness convulsed her body and her partner, fighting with a failing airship engine and being chased by the backlash of an explosion, seemingly ignored her suffering and left her fate to chance.

Penelo had risked being thrown all over the cabin as the Strahl was buffeted by Mist waves and gods only knew what else, so that she could hold an Elixir bottle to Fran's blood frothed lips and do what she could to relieve the Viera's suffering.

She remembered it all so vividly. Every horror etched in stark relief upon recent memory. She remembered Basch's face as he took arms against his brother. Ashe's cry as she cut through the phantom of Rasler. Dr Cid's laughter as the Esper Ffamrit bombarded them with water imbued magick.

It seemed to Penelo impossible that all that happened hours ago and that they had arrived safely back in Balfonheim at all.

That she had run after Balthier (who somehow could run with Fran convulsing in his arms) along the Saccio lane towards the Manse and watched as Fran's clawed hands left bleeding runnels of torn flesh all up and down the Pirate's arms as she grabbed at him in her pain.

It seemed wrong, perverse, to her that here she was now in her lovely night gown, safe and sound lying in her huge, fluffy bed, listening to Fran screaming in pain and knowing that a man who had been kind to her and opened his home to her and the rest of the party was dead now. Her mind could not comprehend the magnitude of it all.

She had seen and experienced and feared death so long at yet when it came upon her, even now, it still left her shaken to the core. There was no defence against death's ravages and with every passing it felt like she lost something of herself, even as she continued to draw breath.

She did not understand and that scared her more than any fear she had lived with since the occupation.

She had hated, but understood, the Imperial invasion. She had feared the soldiers that trapped her in her own mother country and herded her and her people underground, but she had understood why they did what they did. This, however, all that had happened, was just too much and too strange.

It was all so big and she was just too small, too young, too insignificant, for these events.

Another scream rode the night and Penelo was swinging her feet out of bed to hit the wood floor of her room without conscious thought, and now she was moving swiftly, like a dream, along the corridor of Reddas' Manse and to the chestnut door at the end of the corridor furthest from her own room.

Vaan was loitering, wide eyed and pale faced, outside the door. He simply nodded to her silently when she approached.

'What's happening?'

Her friend shrugged in the lull of agonised cries from beyond the closed doors, 'I don't know. He won't let any of us in there. He made Rikken get him a portable bath and some pails of water and he took pretty much all our potions and Phoenix Downs but won't let us see her.'

A surge of fear tinged annoyance rose in Penelo, 'That's stupid. We could help.'

Vaan rubbed the back of his neck and glanced anxiously at the door, 'That's what Basch said and…..' Vaan trailed off.

She frowned wondering why Vaan, who never heeded any restrictions on his movements, was dithering outside the door when he clearly wanted to be inside and also why Vaan was hesitating to recount a tale to her, 'And what? What happened?'

Vaan shuffled his feet, 'I thought he was going to hit Basch. I mean, there was just this look in his eyes, Pen, really – I don't know – it was kind of frightening, and he just said, really quiet '_I don't need you. Fran does not need you. Leave us be,' _and then slammed the door in our faces.'

Penelo found herself trying to imagine such a scene and what each of the players would have done in such an instance; she found that she could imagine it rather easily (she had not forgotten how intense and wound-up Balthier had been in Draklor – he had scared her a little then, too).

Therefore it was a shock to her when she side-stepped Vaan and reached for the door handle. To her surprise the handle turned in her palm (was he really that arrogantly confident that no one would disobey him that he had not even locked the door?) Before Vaan could react Penelo pushed the door open and slipped inside the pirates den.

* * *

_We are all mirrors; reflective surfaces wherein the expectations of others are all that can be seen of us. It is rare for anyone to see beyond the reflection to the sight within. _

Fran was lying on top of the bed and Balthier was carefully laying cool compresses over her bare skin. Penelo noted with horror that Fran's limbs and joints were horribly swollen with a surfeit of fluid due to the Mist poisoning and her breath was rasping.

Fran's eyelids were puffy and swollen shut, her lips were bruised and protruding. In short the Mist had ruined Fran and Penelo instantly suspected that Balthier had refused any one entry so as to protect his partner's dignity.

'I knew someone would be rude enough to intrude, but I did not expect it to be you; I had rather thought the Princess would be the only one bull-headed enough to ignore my express wishes.'

Balthier, leaning forward in a chair drawn up to Fran's bedside, did not turn towards her and his voice was subdued, not angry.

Penelo moved forward swiftly, noting the bowl of water (or more likely luke-warm water mixed with healing draughts) balanced on Balthier's knee and the strips of torn bed sheet he was using as bandages and compresses.

She said nothing as she came to his side, picked up one of the pre-treated damp strips of cloth, and moved to the other side of the bed so that she could begin to wrap Fran's bulbous, painfully red and swollen feet.

Minutes went by and the only sounds were the occasional tearing of cloth as Balthier butchered the bed sheet and the irregular, shallow rasping of Fran's breathing. Penelo worked with patient efficiency loosely draping and binding Fran's limbs in the bandages and compresses to relieve the swollen heat in Fran's beleaguered body.

The large window behind their backs painted the unlit room in shafts of milk-pale moonlight and cast their work in shades of black and white and muddled shades of grey. Out on the ocean a fishing boat rang its bells and the waves sighed with the dull boredom of the ancient, unchanging, surf.

She and Balthier did not speak or acknowledge each other as they both tended to Fran, their only contact came when Balthier handed another strip of cloth to Penelo or she came forward to re-dampen the compresses with liquid from the bowl on his lap.

Presently their labours were completed and Fran was covered nearly head to foot in potion saturated cloth. Penelo was relieved that it seemed that Fran's breathing had evened out a little.

Balthier must have been confident the worst had passed also as he rose from the chair and moved to the chest at the foot of the bed, all without once acknowledging her awkward presence on the other side of Fran's bed.

He plucked out a fresh shirt and disappeared behind the lacquered wood folding screen depicting a scene of the Cerobi Steppes, to exchange his shredded shirt for a fresh one.

Briefly Penelo wondered if Balthier had used some of the healing potions himself upon his arms where Fran had ripped at him, but then supposed it was a foolish and irrelevant thought and let it lie.

Ignored by the only conscious occupant of the room, who was hidden behind the impressive screen, she allowed herself to flop down the side of the bed and dropped her head in her hands. She ached in pain, so much so that her teeth hurt in her jaws and her eyes throbbed. She felt insubstantial and fly away as if at any minute she would simply explode into particles of light much like Dr Cid had done.

The sway of the sea and the quiet rasp of Fran's breathing became a lulling, soothing backbeat as Penelo swayed on the edge of the bed and strained to hear the sounds of Balthier moving behind the screen.

When the man in question popped out of the other side of the screen, in fresh white shirt (albeit a little creased from being folded in a trunk) Penelo rose unsteadily to her feet and turned to face him.

'Your welcome, by the way.'

She told him vaguely as, after giving her one incurious look, Balthier had continued to ignore her walking over to his place in the chair by Fran's bedside. He turned to her and raised one eyebrow, 'I don't recall asking for your assistance.'

Penelo, feeling light headed and strange, the last three days trekking through the Pharos finally catching up with her now that she was no longer running on adrenaline and fright, found herself oddly emboldened, despite his less than gracious response to her presence.

'You didn't, but I won't hold that against you. Fran might be your partner but there are others who care too, taking help from us doesn't mean you can't help Fran alone, only that you don't _have_ to.'

The almost hint of a smirk touched the right side of his mouth as his other brow rose to join the first, 'Pardon me?'

Penelo nodded accepting the apology even though she knew he had not meant to make one, 'I'm sorry for your loss Balthier.'

She knew that she walked on thin ice over a narrow precipice with that simple (honest) sentiment. Dr Cid was an evil man, worse maybe than Vayne Solidor and the Judges that had destroyed so much, but he had still been Balthier's father. No matter what he said there must be some part of him that would mourn his death.

Unsurprisingly (and perhaps to Penelo's relief) Balthier did not reply to her or even acknowledge the statement. He sat hunched shoulders, elbows on knees, and face in palms intently watching the steady rise and fall of Fran's breathing.

Penelo turned her back, disappointment and hurt bubbling under her breastbone (though really she have known not to expect anything at all from him, neither gratitude nor acknowledgement).

She fumbled with the door handle as her vision fractured into specks of light and shadow and the sonorous rush of the waves sounded to her like hissing whispers mocking her.

She pushed on the door when she should have pulled and her fingers slipped off the handle. Cheeks heating with her own stupidity and the acidic burn of staggering fatigue she struggled hopelessly to force open the door and failed.

'….stupid…stupid door….why won't you open?'

She managed to tug the door open only to stub her bare toes as she failed to remember to move out of the way. Behind her she heard the sound of Balthier rising to his feet, perhaps disgusted with her inability to get out of a simple door.

Abruptly, stupidly, she burst into tears. Hating herself even as the first tears descended, because if she was going to cry she would do so in privacy, or maybe with Vaan, she wiped at her face and fought with the door.

It was only when she realised that the door handle was high above her head and not where it should be that it occurred to her that she must have fallen to her knees.

As Penelo was puzzling this out strong arms hefted her up with precious little fanfare and, feeling like a puppet with cut-strings, she found her cheek pressed against a white cotton shirt while her legs wobbled and refused to take her weight.

'For goodness sake; one damsel in distress is all I am prepared to cater for this evening.'

Penelo did not have time to react at all when she suddenly found herself lifted up, like a baby or a particularly unwieldy sack of flour, into his arms. For balance and purchase she wrapped an arm about his neck and looked up at him blankly.

He looked exceedingly annoyed, 'When did you last eat, or sleep, for that matter?' Penelo opened her mouth but he spoke over her, voice sharp with impatient annoyance, 'No, don't bother answering, I can guess.' he sighed.

Balthier did not bother to juggle with her and the door handle, instead he pivoted on his heel and walked her over to the other, unoccupied bed, in the room he and Fran shared through choice.

Penelo was deposited on the bed almost callously, so that she bounced a little as she was dropped down, 'Foolish girl, did no one ever teach you to look to your own welfare before aiding others? You'll be no good to anyone if you drive yourself to an early grave.'

He sounded annoyed and a surge of defensive anger rose in her, 'I wanted to help my friend. I know how to take care of myself. I've been doing it for years.' She snapped.

Looking down on her where she lay upon the bed (his bed) Balthier's face was expressionless and the moonlight brought out the underlying harshness of his sharp features, 'No you haven't. You, my girl, are an altruistic suicide waiting to happen. That you haven't killed yourself fretting over Vaan or anyone else is testament to sheer dumb luck alone.'

Penelo surged forward, anger infusing her with strength, 'That is not true; you don't even know me or anything about me.'

Balthier stepped back and settled into the window seat. He raised one knee, foot braced on the bench and wrapped one arm casually about that leg as he propped his chin upon his knee, 'Don't I now? Well, let's see about that, shall we?'

Penelo couldn't stop herself pressing a little bit into the headboard of the bed as he fixed her with shadowed eyes, the moonlight electrifying the outline of his body and throwing most of the details of his form into shadow.

'What…what do you mean?'

'An artist does not just paint a picture; he studies his subject, learns not just form and movement, but attitude and nature.'

Penelo licked her lips, robbed of the strength to get up off the bed and away, she still wished for flight, 'I don't understand.'

'Hmm, so you say, but I don't believe idiocy is native to your character; though the fact that you let Vaan make your decisions for you does throw that into a certain doubt.'

Penelo gasped, 'I do not…'

Balthier interrupted her, or rather his speech simply rolled over her stifled complaint like a rushing stream over a lone pebble in the riverbed.

'A girl who let's others decide her fate; you cleave to Vaan because you have no one else. You've no real stake in any of this mess but you fight anyway. It seems fair to surmise that, as you are not fundamentally stupid, therefore you are either suicidal or…..'

He allowed his speech to trail off deliberately cruelly aware that she was hanging off his every word, straining to know what he really thought of her after so long assuming that he could not be bothered to notice she existed.

'Or what?' she whispered when the silence dragged on interminably and he showed no sign of relieving her agony.

Balthier smirked with a sly twist of closed lips and uncoiled from the window seat. He rose up to his full height and stretched his arms behind his head as he stifled a yawn, dragging out the moment mercilessly.

'That's the question, isn't it?' he purred as he passed across the end of the bed towards the door, 'What is the truth of Penelo, hmm? Is she the sweet-hearted best friend of a benign idiot or,' he cast her a sharp look over his shoulder as he tugged open the door, 'is there something more, something far more interesting, lurking inside that comely frame of yours?'

He jerked the door open with a flourish and stepped neatly aside as Vaan all but stumbled through the opening, 'Ah, Vaan, make yourself useful and tend to the ladies would you? There is a drink or five calling to me from the Whitecap.'

As Vaan righted his balance and took in the sight of Fran asleep upon one bed and Penelo laid out across the counterpane of the other, with an odd look of suspicious befuddlement upon his face, Balthier slipped through the open door and disappeared.

It didn't matter though because his last words, and the appraising look in his shadowed gaze, had seared her consciousness.

_Something more, something far more interesting, lurking inside that comely frame of yours._

As Vaan yammered questions at her Penelo let her eyes droop shut, a warm diffuse excitement inside her; if a man like _Balthier_ could believe, even for a moment, that Penelo, orphan shop girl of occupied Rabanastre, who until eight months ago had spent her days trying to avoid starvation and molestation by Imperial soldiers, could be something _more _and something greater than her circumstances, then maybe it was true.

For the first time in almost three years, since the Imperial army swept away her life and replaced it with fear and drudgery, Penelo dreamed of tomorrow and the next day……and in those dreams it was not a thing to be feared.

* * *

_It takes bravery to walk in another's shadow. It is far easier to cast a shadow than to mind its passage; those who walk in shadow are silent in their toil. _

Penelo awoke late the next morning and was only marginally surprised to find herself in her own room, still fully clothed, but tucked into her own bed. As she stretched and yawned in greeting of the new day her fist brushed across something white and square and crisp lying on her pillow beside her head.

Turning on her side Penelo unfolded the piece of velum paper and was unsurprised to find another sketch, even though he had promised her he would not draw any more pictures of her without her conscious consent.

Still despite the breaking of his promise Penelo found she did not mind so very much; she'd be a fool indeed to trust the promises of a sky pirate, after all.

When she looked upon the picture of a tired, worn, but still oddly lithe young girl leaning over a bed to gently wrap a Viera's foot in bandage, an expression of quiet authority and competence upon a very young face, it was the words etched into the bottom right hand corner that had the most value:

_Kindness Personified……_

…_..thank you._

Penelo refolded the sheet of paper and pressed it to her heart as she burrowed comfortably under the blankets and returned once more to a happy, contented sleep.

She did not know it but she smiled in her dreams.


	4. Chapter 4

_There is no greater peddler of deceit than the artist; by trade they contrive to find beauty in ugliness and soothe the hearts of the broken with no more than paint and oils. _

'You must have some idea of where he has gone?'

Penelo stood at the back of the room hands twisted about each other as she tried to remain unobtrusive. Ashe stood in the centre of Reddas' living room boldly facing Fran who gazed back down on her impassively.

It was early dusk the day after the fateful night of the escape from the Pharos. Fran had recovered rapidly, and although she was a little swollen about her feet and fingers, she seemed much as she always was.

'A man such as he will go where he wills, or where the wind takes him. He will return when needed.'

Of course now they had a new crisis; Balthier was missing…..or at least absent without leave.

Ashe almost stamped her foot, 'He is needed now.'

At first when Penelo had dragged herself out of bed in the late morning no one had worried over much that Balthier was not in residence; it was assumed (by Penelo and Vaan at least) that he was possibly sleeping off a hangover in the arms of a buxom floozy and would stroll back as dapper as ever sometime in the afternoon.

However afternoon had already faded into near dusk and still there was no sign of Balthier.

No one had seen him in the Whitecap since last night (wherein he had belligerently worked his way through a bottle of Madhu and shunned all company before leaving sometime near dawn) and Vaan had not found him when he investigated all the back alleys of the Port. Penelo herself had questioned Nono and the Moogle had insisted that he had not seen hide nor hair of Balthier anywhere near the Strahl all day.

'We must make plans to move on this Bahamut, wherever it will show itself; what would possess him to disappear at a time like this?'

Ashe was building herself up into one of her high sulks; sometimes she did quite often in regards to Balthier – not for the first Penelo wondered about the relationship between she and the pirate.

'My lady, Balthier is a man of his own will, but our recent ordeals have taken their toll on all of us. Perhaps he merely needs time?'

Ashe hesitated slightly, her suspicion and anger deflating a little as she conceded Basch's point. Vaan and Penelo exchanged looks; somehow the idea of Balthier sitting alone somewhere feeling sorry for himself did not seem to fit at all well. He was much more likely to be sitting somewhere making _someone_ else feel sorry.

Vaan was imagining, with a certain aggrieved envy, as the debate went on around him that Balthier was off single-handedly raiding Archadian nobles or engaged in some other daring-do pirate affair.

Penelo, by contrast, was rather fond of her notion that he had checked himself into some manner of high-end brothel and was busy indulging in the sort of extravagant licentiousness she was almost certain a man like him would get up to on a regular basis when not playing escort to orphans, a back from the dead war criminal and a renegade princess.

Still although no one was saying anything of the sort, the fear was that Balthier had decided to cut his losses and walk out on the party. Of course, evidence against the notion was the fact that Fran and the Strahl were still here and it seemed unlikely that he would walk out and abandon both his partner and his livelihood.

'Then perhaps he is hurt; perhaps the drunken fool has been accosted by brigands or some such, or wandered out onto the steppes and taken a fall?'

Ashe sounded somewhat like a woman snatching at straws and Penelo wondered why it was the Princess cared so much; which was not to say that Ashe was callous or heartless to any of the rest of them, only that she seemed to view Balthier in a different light.

'Balthier has long practice taking care of himself; he is too fond of his own skin to be foolish with it.'

Fran said deflatingly and that was essentially the end of the discussion. Ashe reluctantly subsided and allowed Basch to distract her with talk of politics and tactics. Fran merely sighed (the faintest of breaths hinting at her recent ordeals) and made her way slowly back up to her and Balthier's room.

With just the two of them left Vaan muttered something about going to talk to Rikken and Elza (which Penelo translated to mean that her friend wanted to leer in wonder at Elza's chest) and Penelo herself shuffled off to her own room.

* * *

_Once upon a time I saw a group of players 'pon a stage; the leading man, all in paint and vainglory, struck a lonely shadow when the stage lights faded._

'Oh!'

Upon stepping into 'her' room Penelo almost died in fright at the sight that accosted her.

A genuine easel stood in the centre of her polished floorboards in a pool of warm, wood flavoured sunlight and sitting reclined with insouciant elegance in a chair by her bed was the missing Balthier, hands clasped loosely across his vest.

'Ah, good, you're back.'

Penelo blinked a few times in dumb surprise, noting as she did so, that Balthier was fresh-shaven, clean and impeccably dressed as always, suggesting that he had been back in the Manse long enough to wash and change, all without any of them knowing.

'_I_ am not the one who is supposed to be missing.' she pointed out archly not bothering to ask what he was doing in her room (the easel was a bit of a giveaway).

'Oh, and who is missing, pray tell?'

Balthier had not bothered to move and his usually hooded eyes were almost completely closed. Idly, and seemingly unconsciously, the fingers of his right hand were tracing the complex pattern on his vest and Penelo found her thoughts scattering as she became captivated by the motion.

'You……Ashe is certain you have either abandoned us or are dead in ditch somewhere.'

Balthier chuckled lazily and deigned to open his eyes, 'The Princess is a contrary sort, but not without her charms.'

Penelo, refusing to acknowledge the easel or the fact that Balthier would be expecting her to live up to her end of a bargain he had already broken, clasped and unclasped her hands awkwardly, 'I think that she is half in love with you.'

To her infinite surprise Balthier responded to that statement with a sudden burst of genuine laughter, not a closed lipped chuckle but bright, quick mirth. Penelo's heart lodged in her throat at the sound. She tried to repress a shiver as that sound rubbed against the inside of her head like velvet fur.

'Her highness is not such a fool as that,' Balthier swallowed his amusement as he rose from the chair with a casual stretch.

Penelo, unnerved and feeling decidedly peculiar to have a sky pirate in her bedroom, found words tumbling from her lips, 'Don't you enjoy it? Making young women fall in love with you; you seem to enjoy Ashe's attention.'

Balthier looked over the top of the easel at her with one quirked eyebrow, 'Excuse me?'

Penelo could feel her cheeks flushing, 'Well, don't you? Isn't that what the _leading man _does, toy with women's hearts?'

'Not especially,'

Balthier was picking up and examining with a knowledgeable eye one delicate paint brush after another, not bothering to look her in the eye, 'Contrary to popular misconception I have no interest in stealing hearts.' He flicked his dark gaze up at her almost skewering Penelo with his regard, 'I ask you, what would I _do _with them all once I had seduced them away from their rightful owner, hmm?'

'Break them,' Penelo retorted hotly, though she did not quite understand her own anger.

The tiniest hint of a smile crooked the side of his mouth, 'Logic dictates that I would have even less use for a broken heart than a whole one, and I cannot help but note that you appear to have a very low opinion of me.'

Penelo opened her mouth and then snapped it shut. She slumped onto the edge of her bed and stared down at her knotted fingers clenched together in her lap, 'I'm sorry Balthier.'

He sighed, 'And now you've spoiled it; I had thought we might have a rather spirited discussion there, but alas, you are determined to play meek and subservient.'

She looked up at him sharply, 'What?'

Instead of answering he pointed with one paintbrush, 'Over there please; the light is better.'

She looked from the man half hidden behind the easel to the late evening sun-warmed window embrasure in her room. Wondering why she did it even as she moved Penelo left the bed for the window.

'Hmm, as I said meek and subservient.' Balthier murmured to his paints as he cracked open the lids on the jars of tincture and acrylic paints. The scent of oil's and white spirits filled her room, alien but not unwelcome.

'W-what should I do?'

Balthier had knelt down to the floor where a battered black leather case filled with paint supplies rested by the tripod legs of the easel, he glanced up at her curiously, 'Do?'

'Yes….I mean, how should I….?' she trailed off flushing furiously and waved her arms hopelessly.

She had no idea how to model for a painting and she was afraid of what Balthier might expect of her. After all she rather thought that male painters had a liking for nude models and she was afraid that Balthier expected more of her than she was prepared to deliver.

The man in questions expression was almost comically blank as he studied her uncomprehending. Penelo felt certain that the blood warming her cheeks would soon burst into open flame with her acute embarrassment, 'I don't know how to pose.'

The admission was hard to speak aloud. Penelo had never cared much for affecting airs and graces she did not have, nor in making false impression, but now her lack of sophistication seemed almost a deformity that she feared would ruin his art work.

'Oh, well,' Balthier seemed caught between amusement and something softer and warmer and more kind, 'Have no fear in that regard for I have never painted a formal portrait; so we are, at least, equals in ignorance.'

Penelo was jolted to her core by his confession, 'But….?'

_But why me? Why would you choose to paint me as your first real painting?_

Balthier returned his attention to the blank canvas sat on the easel, 'A predilection for artistic endeavours was something of a handicap while I was young. My father had no time for art and, as you might imagine, the armour of a Judge left little room to secure a sketch book and ink.'

Penelo curled up sideways along the green leather window seat, the sun a warm caress across her body, and wrapped her arms about her drawn up legs while resting her cheek on her knees so she could face Balthier.

He never spoke of his past openly to anyone (save that one time to Ashe) even though they had all known about it since the Phon Coast (the Princess could not keep a secret and Vaan was an excellent eavesdropper). Therefore, aware of the rarity of the moment, Penelo remained as still and quiet as she could.

'I once thought that I would join the staff of Draklor and spend my days designing airships.' Balthier murmured meditatively as he made light strokes with a pencil across the canvas.

Penelo, caught up in the excitement of this unexpected confidence, barely noticed, and thus did not comprehend that the portrait that she feared posing for was already taking shape.

As it seemed increasingly likely that silence, and the scratch of lead pencil across treated canvas, would steal away this oddly confiding conversation, Penelo spoke up.

'I wanted to be a dancer when I was a girl. I used to dream of joining a performers' troupe and riding a caravan all across Ivalice.'

Almost as soon as the words left her lips Penelo sucked in a sharp breath of anxiety. She had never admitted that to anyone (aside from Vaan – who simply knew anyway). Immediately she tensed waiting for what Balthier might say in response to this foolish, girlish, confession.

The pencil was withdrawn from the canvas and Balthier stepped back to consider whatever he had ghosted across the white blankness. He frowned as he considered the portrait he planned in his mind's eye.

Penelo was both relieved and disappointed that Balthier had not responded at all to her cherished childhood ambition.

'You are not dead yet.'

She jumped, staring blankly at him, startled by this seemingly nonsensical statement. Was he insulting her with such a strange thing to say; what did he mean by it? Balthier arched an eyebrow as he peered around the edge of the canvas and tested the bristles of a paintbrush with a thumb.

'What I mean is that you seemed to imply that you will never achieve your dream and I fail to see why. You are hardly too old and you are in good health.'

'Ooh, I see.'

The top of her head was warm from the dying sun and, curled up in one of her favourite stances, she felt oddly comfortable, which surprised her greatly, 'But I couldn't do it now. I could never leave Vaan and the others back in Rabanastre.'

Balthier seemed to be working on blocking out the background as his brush moved lightly and swiftly across the canvas. Penelo who knew little of painting simply watched his arm move back and forth.

'Why ever not? Vaan would no doubt go with you and I fail to see what binds you evermore to Rabanastre.'

Penelo sighed, 'There are people there, Balthier, orphans like me and Vaan, they don't have anyone else. I could never just up and leave them.'

'Hmm, has it not occurred to you, that, technically, you already have? After all, you are here and the urchins are where you left them, under the feet of the Imperials.'

Penelo's head jerked up, 'B-but….no….it isn't like that!'

Balthier tapped a finger to his lips as he studied the array of paint brushes and paints lined up on the ledge of the easel before him.

'Like what?'

'It's not like you make it out to be. It's not like I just chose to walk out on the people I care about,' she argued hotly, obscurely stung by the unspoken accusation she heard in his words, which was, in fact, entirely motivated by her own guilt.

'Hmm, struck a nerve have I?'

Penelo shifted twisting her hands together and turning her head away from him, 'No. I don't know what you're talking about.'

Balthier made an irritated noise in the back of his throat, 'About face, my girl, I'm trying to paint here and I cannot do it if you persist in fidgeting.'

Penelo, who had almost forgotten the reason Balthier was in her room in the first place, felt herself flush with foolishness and stiffly returned to her former pose, 'I….sorry.'

'Hmm,' Balthier raised a paint stained piece of white cloth to buff the canvas, 'I won't keep you much longer, but I want to get the rough done before I lose the light.'

Penelo, who had no real idea what the 'rough' was, fell back on her manners to defend her, 'Sorry.'

Balthier paused, thin tipped brush poised above the canvas, 'Why do you do that?'

'Do what?'

'Apologize for meaningless things; it is shockingly dull.'

Penelo once again found herself offended, 'Because, unlike some people, I was raised to be polite and courteous.'

Her mother had often told her that there were lots of excuses in life for being mean, or selfish, or giving way to grief and bitterness, and for that very reason it was important to never fall victim to any of them.

_When things are bad Penny, don't make them worse by giving in to them; rise above them sweetheart and be good. _

Even with her mother no more than a cherished memory Penelo did her best to live up to that ideal, even when sometimes she felt she had a right not to want to smile at the world that had been so cruel to her already.

To her consternation, as she snapped out of remembrance, she found that Balthier was chuckling as he deftly poked the paint brush in little, light stabbing motions, against the canvas.

'You are the strangest girl. Saccharine sweetness hiding a rather more _tart_ centre. You Dalmascan's are the damnedest people.'

Penelo blinked as she ingested this statement. She did not think it meant as an insult but she did not think it entirely a compliment. Once more, and without her conscious consent, she found her tongue running away with her.

'Well, _I_ rather think that a people who trade useless bits of wood for pointless gossip are pretty strange.'

Balthier chuckled once more, appreciatively, 'Touche, I suppose.' He buffed the picture with the paint smeared cloth once more and then stepped back decisively.

'We've lost the light,' he stated crisply picking up a piece of sack cloth from the floor by his feet and draping it carefully over the canvas. As Penelo watched he grasped the easel and lifted the whole thing into a corner of her room by the vanity and wardrobe.

'I'll leave this here for the night, come the morning I'll take it back to the Strahl.'

As he returned to the centre of the floor and started to re-pack his art supply case Penelo finally grasped his purpose, 'That's it? You're leaving?'

Shadow had filled the room where once the sun had cast the wood furnishings in rich autumnal shades and burnished the white walls with dying golden light. Now the room was filled with muddled shades of grey.

Balthier looked up at her quizzically, 'Well yes. The light has passed and I'll not risk exacerbating my hang-over further by squinting.'

He gave her a crookedly rueful smirk, 'Plus I may as well risk the Princess' excessive wrath now. I dare say even the Princess' haranguing cannot make the pounding in my head any worse, it may even chase the last of the Madhu completely out of my system.'

'But when will you finish it?' she pointed to the sack covered easel pushed into the corner of her borrowed room.

Balthier shrugged unconcerned, 'When I have a mind to. I have your image locked within,' ironically he tapped his temple, 'whatever happens to you my dear, the portrait will be completed.'

Penelo felt as though he had slapped her. A wave of hurt and anger crested in response to his callousness. She had told him already that she did not like the idea of him doing whatever he wanted with her likeness in ink or acrylic…..that it felt like he was stealing something from her, but it seemed as though he either hadn't listened or just did not care.

'Why are you so mean?' she blurted out, knowing she sounded silly and girlish but (because she was a girl….and because she did not really think herself silly) she did not let it stop her next words.

'Why must everything be about controlling people, Balthier? You are only nice so that you can then be cruel. You only give so you can later take. You asked me to pose for you and then tell me you don't need _me_ to finish a picture of _me_.'

Balthier looked just slightly surprised by this outburst. He stood with his painting supplies under one arm and his other hand clasping the door handle.

'I am not controlling anyone.' he replied coolly turning hooded eyes on her from his haughty height.

'This may come as a surprise to you, my dear, for you seem enamoured to martyrdom and selflessness, but I did not _make_ you agree to this painting. I have already promised you the finished article….all I meant by my previous remark, was that you need not pose for me again.' He gave her a blandly disdainful look, 'I had thought this would please you as it seems to unnerve you to do so.'

Penelo's nervous hands had curled into fists at her side, 'Liar.'

The word fell heavy and hissing with heat into the evening coolness of her bedroom. The room fell into deeper indigo shadow striped with elusive grey as Balthier strode swiftly across the room, discarding the painting case on her bed as he passed, to stop before her. He almost towered over her, but Penelo was not so easily intimidated.

'Now, my girl, I have been nothing but polite to you and your boy, Vaan, but I do not care for being called a liar without justification.'

Penelo, heart pounding an irregular staccato beat in her chest and breath quick and shallow, lifted her chin to stare him boldly in the eye and rose on tip toe to increase her stature before him.

'There is justification because you are a liar. You have been playing with me all along like I'm some…..some…….curious little creature you want to poke and prod and see what I'll do.'

'I beg your pardon?'

His eyes narrowed and something bitterly cold and monstrously arrogant cascaded across his expression almost scaring Penelo enough to make her back down, but, perhaps because she was tired of being nothing more than gist in the mill of fate, she refused to surrender.

'You think you're better than me, better than Vaan, but you're not. I'm a person, Balthier, just like you, not some quaint little curiosity from a backward country that you can play with until you get bored and then just throw aside.'

Although there were inches in height standing between them they diminished into nothing as he stared down at her with a remotely angry expression and she teetered on tip-toe fired with fury, chin tilted up to meet those hooded, deceptive eyes.

To Penelo's intense shock Balthier broke the stalemate first; his eyelids came down in a slow blink, sealing off the contact between them, 'Hmm. So that is your true opinion of me, then?'

He turned and walked away without another word. Penelo dropped down on the balls of her feet in confusion and mounting panic as she watched him walk quietly across the purple and grey stroked wooden boards towards the door.

'Balthier!'

He had opened the door and was slipping through it. She ghosted across her room and caught his arm in the blinking of an eye. He turned back to her, annoyance naked upon his face.

Those dark, hidden and hiding brown eyes met her own pale, pale blue ones which, unlike his own, were always filled with light from within.

'What is it now?' he demanded utterly coldly half in and half out of the threshold of the doorway, 'For I am warning you, I'm only inclined to listen to so much defamation of character before I lose my temper, and I assure you, you do not want to provoke my bad temper.'

'I…..?'

The thundering of her heart in her ears drowned out even the incessant murmur of the ocean.

'Well? Spit it out girl.'

'I…..Balthier…..'

He sighed irritably when words continued to fail her and jerked his arm roughly from her plucking grip. He slipped from the door and she moved with him, reaching out once more, rising up on tip-toe as she grabbed at him.

She did not plan what she did next; she would never have planned such a thing.

Lips met lips and she was pressing, precariously balanced, against the length of his body before she knew what was happening. His bottom lip was full and soft and the faint scent of leather and gun powder brushed against her senses a split second before his hands closed firmly on her shoulders and pushed her, firmly, away from him.

It was the slightest of contacts, not even a kiss because he did not once respond to her, but that one confused gesture was enough. Penelo stumbled back onto the balls of her feet and Balthier stepped from her with the intention of making his way back to his own room.

Penelo only knew something had gone wrong when Balthier stopped abruptly and his eyes, hard and angry, widened in surprise.

'Oh bollocks.' he swore and Penelo twisted on her heels to see what the matter was (though she feared she already knew). As she turned she found herself almost face to face with Vaan's dumbfounded expression.

'P….Pen…what's going on?'

Heat and cold washed through her and her hands jumped up to cover her mouth in horror, 'Oh no, no, no…..Vaan….'

But it was too late and Vaan was jumping to all the wrong conclusions, as well as jumping towards Balthier fists flying. Balthier had already predicted this would happen and was standing lithe and ready to defend himself.

He deftly stepped out of the way when Vaan surged at him and pivoted gracefully to guide Vaan face first into the wall before pinning one of her friend's arms behind his back and holding him against the wall.

'Let's not do anything hasty Vaan. I'm having a bad enough evening already and it has only just bloody begun. I don't want to have to hurt you, but be assured I will if you make me. Do you understand?'

Vaan made some inarticulate angry growling noise and Balthier rolled his eyes, 'Fate has it in for me, that is the only answer.' He muttered as at that moment things went from bad to worse.

'What in the name of the gods is going on here?'

Ashe arrived suspicious and on the verge of anger once more as she looked from a flustered Penelo to Balthier pinning a struggling Vaan to the wall.

Penelo, wishing that she could simply die right that very moment, could only stand stock still and numb in the face of total disaster.


	5. Chapter 5

_If all a soul can do is bleed, I'd sooner be without._

'What in the name of the gods is going on here?'

Ashe demanded and her eyes rooted, unwavering, to Balthier as, head pounding with a dull incessant beat and Vaan squirming against his arm lock, the pirate, who had found himself in the centre of a royal farce, had a moment of total mental inadequacy.

_That's what I would like to know._

Deliberately not looking at Penelo (for looking on the girl seemed to be detrimental to his state of being, if this whole affair was any indication) Balthier gave Vaan's arm a quick, painful, wrench for good measure and then released the youth before turning to Ashe with what he hoped was a suave and confident half-smile (but which he feared, considering his mood, his aching head, and current predicament, was likely to be something of a grimace).

'Ah, Princess, I was just using Vaan as a handy demonstration tool.'

'Demonstration tool?' Ashe's voice was cold enough to snap steel and freeze the blood in his veins, 'What were you demonstrating; how to break someone's arm in the most unpleasant manner while a guest in someone else's house?'

Unlike certain people Ashe had no qualms in speaking her mind and did not feel the need to apologize for having the social graces of a hungry Couerl. Balthier could feel his headache progressing throughout the lobes of his brain with every interminable second. Being struck straight to the grey matter by numerous bolts of Thundaga would be preferable to this.

Still he would grin and forebear it, 'Not quite, Ashe, but surprisingly close. I was merely demonstrating to young Penelo how to master an arm lock hold that does not require one to have greater physical strength than one's opponent.'

Ashe was no fool, after giving him a long look, she turned to Vaan who was rubbing at his arm in surly and disagreeable temper, 'Vaan is this true? Were you merely 'demonstrating' defensive manoeuvres for Penelo's benefit?'

Vaan, who had absolutely no common sense whatsoever ignored Ashe and looked hotly up at Balthier, 'I'll show you defensive manoeuvres...'

He did not get to finish whatever facile insult he was intending for at that moment Penelo leapt forward and slammed her friend's head into the wall (far harder than Balthier had done) before grabbing his arm and wrenching it behind his back painfully.

'Like this Balthier?' she asked him in chipper voice, those misleadingly sweet eyes of hers over-brimming with entirely feigned innocence.

If it wasn't for the fact that this entire mess was of her doing Balthier might have been quite exceedingly impressed by both her quick thinking and her ruthless treatment of her friend.

As it was he merely found himself thoroughly irritated with the whole blasted affair, 'Marvellously done, you are a swift learner.'

Ashe was watching all this with narrowed, disturbingly thoughtful eyes. Almost absently she raised her thumb and forefinger to her bottom lip and pulled on it in a fashion that should have looked childish and ridiculous but instead was oddly endearing, 'Where have you been Balthier? We have missed you.'

Oh, and wasn't that a barbed, barbed, question? Balthier did not need to guess that her highness was using the royal 'we' in this instance and that despite the deceptively gentle softness of her words she was not voicing concern over his absence.

When she said 'We have missed you,' it translated to mean how dare you leave me when I need your airship, your gun, and possibly your life to liberate my country, which I was foolish enough to lose in the first place...oh yes, Balthier almost smiled to himself, his life was a bed of roses right now.

On the one hand he was monstrously hung-over (and why was that all the best pleasures in life had nasty side-effects?) on the other he was now guilty of patricide, which had proved to be a lot more harrowing than he had initially surmised.

To top it all off he now had oddly passive-aggressive Rabanastre orphans trying to kiss him and a dangerously possessive Dalmascan monarch (who he was worryingly attracted to) who viewed him as a useful tool and would dearly like to sink her claws into him so deep they would meet in the middle.

Sometimes Balthier truly thought that life would be infinitely better if he simply packed Fran, Nono, and himself into the Strahl and flew off the edge of the map; there would be fewer people there to thoroughly foul up his life.

He hated bloody _people_ with their demands and their questions and their constant expectations...yes, perhaps after this mess with Bahamut was over with, he should simply pack-in the pirate life and become a reclusive hermit somewhere...Fran probably wouldn't mind so much, as long as there was a wood she could attempt to commune with.

Hmmm, there was a distinct possibility that a trifle more of that Madhu remained in his bloodstream and his thoughts than he had first suspected. Sadly it was not enough to allow him to see the funny side of this utterly farcical state of affairs.

All he had wanted to do was paint a bloody picture; how it had all gone so wrong was simply beyond him.

Balthier was rudely interrupted from his somewhat deranged consideration of how long it would take to grow a suitably hermit-like beard by Ashe's fingers clicking in his face, 'Good gods man, how drunk are you?

He sighed, 'I'm not; therein lies the tragedy.'

Ashe regarded him quizzically (which simply meant that she re-arranged her facial features from angry scowl to puzzled scowl via subtle variations in the lifting of her left brow), 'I have been trying to speak with you, have you not heard a word I've said?'

Balthier, who did not like to be caught out when obviously lacking in mental acuity, began to lose what little stock of patience had survived recent events, 'Apparently not, Princess, or I dare say I would have made some effort to answer you.'

He was aware in the periphery of his beleaguered senses that Penelo had released Vaan only to drag him further down the corridor, wherein she was now whispering to him in fierce aside as the youth in question continued to glare daggers into Balthier's back.

Where the bloody hell was Fran when he needed her?

'You are returned I take it?'

The answer to his desperate mental summons sauntered down the hall all gently swaying hair and impossibly elegant legs.

Were it not for the fact that his act of nonchalant control of the situation would have been ruined by so doing, he would have laughed for sheer relief as Fran interjected herself into this little tableau of awkwardness.

With a quick flick of enigmatic eyes and twitch of her ears Fran assessed the situation, gave him a droll look, and moved protectively to his side forcing Ashe (who seemed to be just slightly intimidated by Fran) to step back.

'You do not appear to be in poor health; no ill came to you while you were away from here?'

Fran, who happened to have helped him climb in the second floor window of their shared room earlier today and then left him to sleep off his drunkenness while convincing the rest of the party he was nowhere about, gave him a look that clearly said that she did not know what had happened but she was assigning all blame upon him regardless.

'Yes Fran, no ill came to me while I was gone.' It was all waiting for him when he came_ back_.

_One picture, that was all. A picture of a pretty girl in oils and acrylics, that was all I wanted and now no doubt Vaan wishes to murder me in my sleep and Penelo...the gods alone know what she intended from all this. _

With Ashe forced into reluctant retreat and Penelo riding rough-shod over Vaan's spurned and aggrieved murderous intent, Balthier risked a quick sideways glance at the pigtailed blonde who had caused all this woe.

Balthier had had women abruptly kiss him before and usually been more than happy to reciprocate, but he had never been so completely thrown by it as now.

Primarily because, as blasé and disinterested as his feigned to be in previous intimate encounters with other young ladies, he had in fact been actively seducing them.

With Penelo he had no such designs (as he had told her more than once) and that she would go from almost, but not quite, insulting him to awkwardly, clumsily, throwing herself at him left Balthier utterly perplexed and, here was the rub, feeling as if he had somehow led the girl wrong.

Quite abruptly Balthier decided that he desperately, ravenously, needed a drink.

* * *

_I am the house that grief built; haunted by those who have left me and departed where I can ne'er follow._

Penelo slammed the door of her room after shoving Vaan through it and shot the lock home, leaning against the solid wood and trying to catch her thoughts.

Vaan stood in the centre of the early evening moonlight painting her bedroom floor looking like a wounded Chocobo chick, 'How could you let _him_ kiss you Pen?'

Gritting her teeth against the wave of embarrassment and guilt, Penelo breathed deeply and tried to marshal her patience, 'I didn't Vaan. Balthier did not kiss me...' she took another deep breath and said again, for the third time, what Vaan seemed incapable of grasping, 'I kissed him and as soon as I did so he pushed me away. Absolutely nothing happened.'

'But Pen,' Vaan, although his voice had broken some time again, could still hit grating highnotes when in full throated whine, 'Balthier was in your room. What was he doing here if he...I mean if you and...' Vaan trailed off reddening in the face and shuffling his feet as Penelo felt herself paling.

'How could you think that of me Vaan? That I would...that Balthier and I...'

'Well,' Vaan rallied looking up at her as the pale frosted moonlight, reflecting off the solid blanket of the ocean, and shining through her window, lit his hair and made the silvery strands glow, 'it's only natural, I mean with a man like Balthier, there's only one reason he'd be in a girl's room.'

Penelo felt the bottom drop out of her stomach at Vaan's words (which despite his anger, still accorded Balthier high accord, if only in being a preeminent cad). It wasn't that the allegation was so far-fetched or that in any other circumstances, or with any other girl, she wouldn't have suspected the same. It was that Vaan (who knew what life in Rabanastre had been like) would think she would ever do such a thing with _any_ man.

'Vaan please...I couldn't...I...you know Vaan, _you know. _How could you think...'

'Then why did you kiss him?'

One question without a simple answer: why had she kissed him?

Was it simply because she knew he did not want her?

Penelo loved Vaan truly and completely, even though sometimes she wanted to bash his head in with a blunt instrument for being an oblivious fool on occasion, but even with Vaan, she could never imagine surrendering herself to him in anything...intimate...even the thought of it (and even knowing he would never, ever hurt her) made her feel cold and sick.

She could almost feel herself growing pale and cold and distant as the little hole of forbidden pain inside her opened up.

'Pen? Penny? Oh, no Penelo...I'm sorry don't, don't think about...Pen?'

_The memory of a man's hands on her bare skin, a man's body bearing down on her, pushing her down to the hard, cold ground, riding her down like an unbroken Chocobo, his breath in her face hot as the furnaces of the underworld, strong fingers curled around her forearms, nails digging into her flesh and big, wet teeth so close to her own mouth..._

Without knowing it she had begun to shake and the vibrations of her distress reverberated through the wooden door as her legs gave way and she crumpled, in tears, onto the floor.

Vaan was there almost before she hit and his arms encircled her, 'Gods Pen, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I just saw you and Balthier and he had his hands on you and I know how you feel about that and I,' Vaan swallowed as Penelo tried to stifle sobs and wiped her nose on his shoulder just as she had a thousand times before, 'I know Vaan, it's alright.'

She forgave him, just as she had a thousand times before for all manner of little and not so little mistakes, 'He wanted to paint my portrait. That's why Balthier came to my room.'

Vaan pulled back so he could look her in the eyes, 'Huh?'

Penelo withdrew and pulled herself together, swallowing back the dark wave of old horror and closing her heart around it, her soul re-absorbing the wound and tucking the pain and the fear where it could no longer paralyse her every move and haunt her every thought.

She pointed desolately at the easel, hidden in the corner of her frost and moon drenched room, 'See?'

Vaan ambled over to the easel and roughly pulled off the sack cloth. For a moment he just peered at the faint pencil outlines and light shading of drying paint that Balthier had applied.

'Oh,' was all he said, and curious, Penelo stood to see for herself.

'Oh,' Penelo unintentionally echoed Vaan.

It was difficult to see in the wavering shadows of the ocean reflected on the walls of her room and the misty light of the moon, but slowly, tantalisingly slowly, the details of the sketch that formed the foundations of a painting revealed themselves.

A girl, all curled in on herself, upon a window seat with the sea and the brilliant sunset sky as her backdrop, gazed with odd boldness back out at them from the canvas. Despite the fact that this girl was no more than a ghost in pencil lead, there was something so vital and so engaging about her that she held the eye with a near vicelike intensity.

Penelo, tears drying on her face, found herself smiling. She almost didn't recognise the perfectly captured features of her own face, and yet at the same time she felt that the girl in the portrait might, just might, be Penelo. Or maybe just who Penelo wanted to be?

Quite abruptly Vaan turned on his heel and walked across the room towards the door, wrenching Penelo's gaze from the picture, 'Vaan? What is it, where are you going?'

Fright strangled her as she feared the picture, or the fact that Balthier had made it, had offended him. The last thing in all Ivalice she would ever want was to hurt Vaan.

With the door half opened Vaan turned back to her with an oddly grim expression on his face. The moonlight caressed his round, boyish features and suggested the promise of strength he might have in adulthood, 'I'm going to find Balthier.'

Was all he said and she had but rarely heard him sound so serious.

'Why?' she croaked in a tiny voice.

'Because he needs to finish what he started; he needs to make the girl in the picture real again.'

'Vaan?'

Penelo stared at him uncomprehending. Vaan blinked his eyes a couple of times and she thought that, just maybe, a gleam of moisture from his eyes caught the moonlight like quicksilver before he blinked it away.

'That's you, Pen,' Vaan told her, his voice oddly hoarse as he pointed to the uncovered easel behind her back, 'you like you were before the war. If Balthier can bring that you back then I'm going to make sure he does it, whether he wants to or not.'

Before Penelo could so much as formulate a reply Vaan was gone and moving with such swift purpose that she could not even here his feet clomping on the boards outside.

For a handful of seconds, as Penelo fumbled for her nosegay and pressed it to her mouth taking a number of erratic shaking breaths, all that filled her mind was the hissing laughter of the ocean waves, just beyond her window.

It did not take long, however, for reality to catch up with her and Penelo blinked and jolted as she realised the ramifications of another run-in between Vaan and Balthier. Finally able to galvanise her mind and body into action Penelo clumsily lurched into movement.

'Vaan...wait!'

With one last, thoughtful, look at the unfinished portrait, Penelo ran from her room still calling after Vaan.

* * *

_I am a dancer so watch me dance; I shall step a merry jig for you, ever at arm's length. I am dancer and never shall you snare me. I am a dancer and I dance alone._

The Whitecap was heaving, as it invariably was, with a mass of the less savoury aspects of Ivalice society (and he used the term loosely).

Sitting at his usual table (the previous occupants taking one look at his face and deciding to call it an early night) with Fran beside him Balthier took a healthy swig from his ale tankard, having just completed regaling Fran of his innocuous interactions with Penelo, which had had such baffling results.

Fran sat back in her chair and tapped her long fingers upon the metal of her own (untouched) tankard, 'So she has caught your eye, has she?'

Balthier sighed, 'I know that you do not mean that in an amorous way, so will answer honestly, yes she has.'

'A pretty girl, she is.'

Fran gave her words subtle inflection, not quite a question but a request for further clarification, nevertheless. Fran was one of the few people who knew what his 'art', for lack of a better term, meant to him, and what a rarity it was for anyone to catch his eye, and his muse, as Penelo had.

'Ivalice is filled with pretty girls, and those who would be pretty, that is not the reason I wanted to paint her.'

Fran merely nodded, she did not truly need him to explain it to her, for she knew him far better than he knew himself (Balthier was man enough to admit as much, but only in the privacy of his thoughts), 'Much wrong has been done her, she carries more scars of the soul than one of her years should.'

He nodded. He knew Fran held special affection for the girl, 'And yet she is still, fundamentally, almost intrinsically, innocent.'

Balthier mused looking down into the dregs of his tankard, 'I swear to you Fran, on whatever oath you would chose me to honour, that the thought of seducing Penelo never once crossed my mind. She is barely more than a child.'

Fran almost smiled at this, 'To mine eyes the same could be said of you. Scant six years separate your birth from hers.'

Balthier gave her a withering look, 'Fran I have precious little honour and integrity left me, allow me the notion that I have the moral decency _not_ to seduce the seventeen year old sweetheart of my potential apprentice, if you please.'

His partner in all things save the carnal quirked an eyebrow, 'So you have considered bedding her?'

Balthier finished the last of his pint and briefly considered just how useless he might be in the morning if he took another – but then decided her royal Highness Dalmasca would flay him alive if he appeared hung-over in her presence once more and decided he didn't need the drink after all.

'No,' he answered the blunt question with blunt honesty, 'I won't deny she is pretty but I am not such a blind fool that I cannot see that Penelo is deathly afraid of men. Nor am I quite bastard enough that I would ever do anything to deliberately upset the girl.'

'Think you not that what you did, rendering her physical essence in pen and ink, was harmful to her?'

He looked up at Fran sharply in response to that deliberately mild question that nevertheless hinted at a subliminal reproach. Something like chagrin and almost alarm hit his system like a jolt of powerful spirits.

'Bugger all,' he swore finally seeing Penelo's odd, alternatively subservient and hostile, reaction to him in new light, 'Damn all but I did not see it in such a way.'

Fran simply nodded once more, 'See you only what the artist's eye will see. Only what you can render understandable to your mind's eye through your pens and paper,' she cocked her head and regarded him distantly with ancient, alien eyes, 'You do not see the person, only the image. Ever it is with you.'

Balthier sighed, 'I would argue that my intentions were benign and I made no attempts to do anything but engage the shy child in a little banter, but the point is mute. I forgot that I was dealing with a girl who is not used to such.'

Paradoxically, now that she had made her partner see his fault in this matter and recognise that his actions, however well meant, had had unforeseen consequence, Fran sort to raise his spirits.

'That you viewed the girl as worthy of such verbal jousts as you call conversation is credit to your genuine affection for Penelo as a hume and person. Do not shun her now simply because she is young and misunderstood your intent.'

Balthier felt his brows stitch together, 'First you tell me, without actually telling me, that I have harmed the girl by inadvertently playing with her emotions, and now you tell me to continue to do so?'

'I say no such thing,' Fran rebuffed him, 'You fear to form connection with others of your kind Balthier. You and she are not so terribly different. You would control those you fear might ensnare, and then betray you, and she would withdraw and hide her lights for fear of abuse. Not so very different at all.'

He knew better than to argue with Fran, no matter what the subject, even when it was a matter of his own self, Fran had a way of winning any argument, or more accurately, making it so he ended up proving her point for her, through no design of his own.

'I do not control people and most certainly fear no mere hume,' he muttered churlishly addressing his empty tankard.

Someone else had said very similar to him, that he controlled people, playing games with them designed to keep everyone at arm's length, but who was it?

He was still considering that very point when he looked up just in time to see tow-haired Vaan striding purposefully toward him, or at least trying to; the youth was somewhat waylaid by the Whitecap crowds and Penelo, who was dragging on his arm like a Hume-anchor trying to further impede his progress.

Balthier swallowed back a number of choice epithets as this night simply went from bad to worse, 'Fran, would you be so kind as to fetch me another beer? I have a feeling I shall need one presently.'

Fran's ears twitched as she espied Vaan also and then, without a word, she rose and moved towards the bar.

Balthier sat back in his chair and affected his habitual pose of studied nonchalance awaiting the inevitable as Vaan finally approached the table with a harried Penelo still trying to persuade him to turn back and leave well enough alone.

'Balthier!'

Despite the almost wall to wall din filling the packed Whitecap to its rafters, Vaan's over-loud, overly confident, and trying too hard to be commanding, voice, still rose above the muted roar of the gamblers, reprobates, mark hunters and working girls who called the Whitecap their second home.

Internalising a sigh Balthier contrived to smirk at Vaan with his best impersonation of someone who isn't wishing for a sudden coronary to save him from this latest embarrassment, 'Vaan and Penelo, what brings you out so late?'

Momentarily distracted by the hale and hearty greeting Vaan deflated slightly while Penelo, eyes too wide and showing too much white, like a frightened Dreamhare, simply blinked at him in surprise and dawning suspicion.

'I wanted to talk to you,' Vaan persisted still clinging to his, rather awkward, but commendable attempt to look grim and commanding.

Balthier held onto his smirk by a force of will as his eyes flicked to Penelo who, much as he, looked like she would rather go a few rounds alone against Vayne Solidor and the entire remaining judiciary of the Empire than have a 'talk' about anything at all that involved he, Vaan, and Penelo herself.

Still, Balthier was nothing if not a consummate actor, 'Oh, what about precisely?'

Vaan's jaw jutted out as he struck out his chest in a rather unfortunate semblance of an angry cluckatrice, 'About the painting. I want to talk about the painting.'

'Oh, that's what you wish to talk about?'

Balthier continued to smile inanely as Penelo refused to look at him and the coronary he hoped for refused to strike him dead.

One picture, one pig-tailed girl, and all this trouble; Balthier found himself almost brought to laughter to consider that such a trivial thing could have such bloody inconvenient consequences.

Yet the worst of it all, Balthier conceded, as he watched Penelo close her eyes and resign herself, much as he had, to a very unpleasant conversation, was the realisation that, despite the trouble it had caused him, his fingers still almost itched with the desire to draw the girl.

Because she was still the prettiest, bravest, oddest little thing he had ever seen.


	6. Chapter 6

_The quill and ink are the greatest and most deadly of all weapons; prose is my sword and words form the garrisons of my mighty army. _

Penelo suspected that if it was possible to die of embarrassment she would have died at least a dozen times over already. It was almost a disappointment that it seemed that she couldn't die of sheer mortification.

'You want to talk about a painting?'

Balthier sounded disgustingly unconcerned as he casually waved both she and Vaan into the vacant seats at the table opposite him.

'Not just any painting; I want to talk about the one you were doing of Penelo,' Vaan said talking as if he didn't know she was sitting right beside him dying a thousand painful deaths of shame _because of him and his big mouth that would not shut up!_

'I see,' Balthier purred as Fran returned with a tankard of ale for Balthier and two tall glasses of root-beer for Penelo and Vaan. 'Let me guess, you are here in your capacity as Penelo's stalwart defender, to insist that I cease and desist in my artistic endeavours, hmm?'

'Huh?' Vaan took a moment to think through Balthier's question, 'No. I want you to finish it, y'know, before we go off to the find the Bahamut.'

Penelo wrapped her hands around her cool glass (which was shockingly clean for the Whitecap) and stared into its liquid depths. She wished she could drown in the glass, better yet, she wished Fran had brought her a pint of ale as she had Balthier.

Balthier had paused with his mug halfway to his lips and now he simply stared at Vaan blankly, before carefully setting the metal ale mug down on the table once more, untouched.

'Contrary little ruffian, aren't you? One moment you are in high fervour to beat ten colours out of me and now you are insisting I finish the painting that had you so worked up in the first place?'

Vaan scrunched his face up as he considered whether 'contrary ruffian' was an insult and whether or not to be offended by it. In the end he decided not to worry about it and press on with his point (much to Penelo's chagrin).

'It wasn't the painting, I didn't even know about that then.'

'Hmm, so you decided to attack me on a whim then?'

'No, that's not what I meant...and I didn't attack you exactly...'

Penelo snuck a quick look up from where she had been sipping her drink with the single-minded attention of someone who wants nothing more than to not be present. As she did so she thought she saw the tiniest of smirks dancing over Balthier's closed lips and realised that he was rather skilfully distracting Vaan from his original thought.

Vaan, growing red in the cheeks as he realised he was losing control of the conversation (not that he ever had control) lost patience, 'I saw you with your hands on her...you shouldn't do that!'

Penelo felt her heart squeeze down in terror, no, no, no, but she did not want Balthier to know, or even suspect, anything about what had happened to her. She didn't even know why but the thought that those dark eyes, which had looked at her with something like interest, would now turn to her with pity appalled her.

Balthier's eyebrows quirked up, 'I have no idea of what you refer.'

'I _saw_ you.' Vaan, elbows on the table, leaned forward, not so much intending menace as simply being too worked up to sit still. Penelo resisted the desire to smash her mostly empty glass over his head to make him stop.

Balthier mimicked Vaan posture and leaned forward across the table also, a snakelike smile in residence upon his lips.

'What did you see Vaan, hmm? Really now, what could you possibly have seen in the half second it took for you to jump to all the wrong conclusions?'

'I know what I saw,' Vaan looked like he wanted to back down, but didn't dare. Balthier remained perfectly at ease leaning across the table, watching Vaan unblinkingly. Penelo looked across from the two males to Fran who sat back in her chair stirring a cup of warm hippocras and looked rather bored by the whole mess.

Penelo had to do something to break this stalemate and so she reached across the table and snatched up Balthier's disregarded tankard of ale. Pulling it across the table she raised it to her lips and downed the entire contents in one go.

She blinked as she swallowed down the malty beverage and carefully returned the empty tankard to the table. Three pairs of eyes were now staring at her with differing levels of surprise.

'I'm sorry,' Penelo shrugged awkwardly, 'it's hot in here and I was thirsty.'

Balthier, looking bemused, sat back in his chair and folded his hands casually across his brocaded vest. Vaan looked mildly scandalised (though Penelo didn't know why, she'd been able to drink him under the table since they were both thirteen) and Fran just looked vaguely amused by the whole thing.

For a brief few seconds a little bubble of silence reigned over their table before Balthier roused himself and looked over at Vaan, eyes half-cast and voice disdainfully lazy.

'Alright Vaan, let me put it to you frankly. Portrait painting is a time consuming business, and in case it had escaped your notice, we may be called upon to go to war at any moment. Therefore my time is finite; I can either paint your darling, dear Penelo, or I can attempt the much more arduous task of teaching you how to fly. So which will it be, hmm?'

Penelo looked up sharply from her contemplation of an unusually shaped stain on the stone floor of the Whitecap to glance at Vaan. Her friend looked stricken, caught between the two opposing desires to defend her honour (or whatever he thought he was doing with all this) or his long cherished dream to fly an airship.

'Wha...?'

Vaan, pale and wane, looked down at the sticky table top as if it would tell him what to do.

With Vaan's gaze averted and Fran's as mysterious and impassive as ever, Penelo risked a glance over to Balthier who was watching Vaan with an amused, vaguely smug expression. They all knew what Vaan would choose. There really wasn't even a contest, or shadow of doubt.

'Penelo?' Vaan looked almost beseeching.

She resisted rolling her eyes, the ale swimming about her stomach making her cheeks hot and her mind just a touch unsteady (she had not eaten in hours and the ale in Balfonheim seemed to be of stronger mettle than the stuff her brothers' used to let her drink back home).

'It's fine Vaan.'

She hadn't wanted him to come here tonight in the first place; in fact she dearly wished he'd never accidentally witnessed the whole embarrassing incident with the kiss to begin with.

Balthier, who had watched all this with the patient amusement of someone who had planned to pull this gambit from the start (and she disliked him for using Vaan's fickleness against him while, at the same time, being immensely thankful that he had), now decided to close the deal.

'So what shall it be: art or flight, hmm?'

Vaan nibbled his lip and raised a hand to rub at the back of his neck, 'Umm, well, you could always do the painting once we're finished with Bahamut and Vayne and the rest of the Empire, right?'

Fran shook her head, 'He speaks as if of mere trifles; alack the callowness of youth.'

Balthier chuckled and made to rise from his chair, 'So it's flight you chose, hmm?'

For the first time since this whole conversation had begun Balthier met Penelo's eyes, sardonic smirk in place, 'Indeed you are blessed with a true friend who ever and always puts your cause before his own, my dear.'

Penelo decided that, in her present mood, Balthier should have been very pleased that she decided not to dignify that statement with a response. She watched as he and Fran left the table and the Whitecap.

Vaan turned towards her after they were gone, 'Er, Pen, I...'

Penelo rose to her feet, annoyed, hot, and bothered, and feeling just a little sick from the ale she had gulped down, 'It's fine Vaan, really. Now can we please go? I'm tired.'

* * *

_It is not courage that I have, when I say that here I make my stand; I am merely weary of the running._

Penelo did not know quite how she did it, but she managed to get through a whole day in both Vaan and Balthier's company without either humiliating herself further or attempting to kill either of them.

The flight practice had been as awful as she imagined and Penelo somewhat suspected that the only thing that had prevented Balthier from flinging Vaan out of the airlock was Fran's gentle chiding.

For her part Penelo tried to concentrate and commit to memory everything Fran had told her about the navigation systems and the diagnostic arrays and the do-hickey-whatnot-thingie-bob... oh, gods it was hopeless, she was not a navigator, a pilot, or a mechanic!

It was not as though it was Penelo's dream to be a sky pirate and she had little interest in airships, but she knew that Vaan would never commit any of it to memory. In fact it was miraculous that he seemed to get the hang of the steering levers so well, but then again, how much thought could it take to pull a stick back and forth and left and right?

Therefore she was not in the best of humours when she returned to the manse (before Vaan who wanted to go and talk to some strange man he had befriended along the wharf...Vaan having the ability to locate and befriend all the native oddities of any given place).

As soon as she stepped in the door and saw Ashe and Basch (with identical expressions of grim resolution on their faces) standing in the foyer, seemingly awaiting her return, her spirits plummeted (much as the Strahl had almost done under Vaan's clumsy control).

'Oh, no.'

Penelo took an involuntary step backwards towards the door, almost subconsciously preparing to flee, and as she did so, stepped on Balthier's foot as she crashed into him as he entered the manse behind her.

'Ugn...do you mind?'

Balthier looked up from his foot to Penelo's pale and stricken face and then to Ashe who had made to step forward when seeing Penelo's distress. Balthier met Ashe's eyes and then Basch's and his expression closed in on itself, 'So our sojourn in Balfonheim comes to an end, does it?'

Fran had slipped in the doorway behind Balthier and Penelo, 'We have heading and course for the Bahamut at last?'

Ashe nodded and bit down on her bottom lip savagely but it was Basch who answered Fran's question, 'Rabanastre; the Marquis Ondore and the Resistance fleet seek to engage Vayne's forces over the skies of the city. It seems like as not that the Bahamut will be there.'

'No...' _Not Rabanastre...not another battle in her home. What about Kytes and Migelo and all the people she had left behind? Without she and Vaan there who was to protect the children?_

'Hmm, well, there is a symmetry in it all I suppose,' Balthier remarked as the three jaded adults calmly discussed events, unaware or merely ignoring, Penelo's fright. 'Convenient in a way, too, at least we know the way back to Dalmasca.'

'When do we leave?'

Fran asked quietly, stepping closer to Penelo so that the long, gossamer tendrils of her white hair brushed against Penelo's bare arm. Somehow in that one, seemingly impersonal contact, Penelo felt that she was not invisible after all. Someone at least recognised her fear and pain.

Ashe looked from Fran to Penelo and something passed over her expression, 'You, Basch, Balthier and I will leave at dawn. It will take until dawn the next day to reach Rabanastre, which should be just enough time to use the affray as distraction to cross to the Bahamut.'

She glanced at Penelo with pained sympathy in her eyes, 'I do not think it right that Penelo and Vaan should join us, however.'

Penelo looked up in surprise as Ashe stepped up to her and grasped her shoulders, 'You and Vaan have served myself and your kingdom with the bravery and conviction of the greatest of Knights,' she looked back at Basch for his assent and the kindly older man nodded, a gentle smile upon his lips as he looked at Penelo.

'Aye, bravery indeed, more so than one might think for someone as young as you and Vaan,' Basch rumbled in his deep, comforting, faintly paternal, voice.

Ashe nodded and squeezed Penelo's shoulders a little to draw her attention back, 'As your Queen, however, I cannot permit you to risk your lives any further. Therefore I have decreed it that you and Vaan should stay here. Should we be victorious I will send means for you to return to Rabanastre.'

Penelo found herself looking from Ashe's serious eyes to Balthier, who had taken to lounging against the back of the sofa in the foyer and main living room area, with his arms folded across his chest and head bowed as if in thought.

Something about his posture suggested that he did not agree with either Ashe or Basch's decision. Fran came around to join her partner and the pensive little furrow in her brows suggested that she too was not completely happy about leaving Penelo (and Vaan – though he was not here to know about it) alone in Balfonheim while they went off to fight for the place that was Penelo and Vaan's home.

'No.'

Penelo was surprised by how calm and steady her voice was, 'Ashe I know that you are our Queen, or at least should be, and I know that you and Basch just want to protect us, but the fact is, it isn't your choice to make. If Vaan and me were old enough to fight with you on Mount Bur-Omisace, and Giruvegan, and in Draklor, then we're good enough to go the whole way.'

Ashe opened her mouth to argue but Fran spoke up, 'She speaks truth; do not deny her passage because of that which she cannot change. Age is but a number and death will find her wherever she be, should it be the will of the fates.'

Ashe turned to Fran, both angry and appalled, 'I could not live with myself should I prove responsible for either she or Vaan's death.'

Fran shrugged, 'Unless you raise your sword against them you will not be; Penelo's choice is her own and the consequence will be as well.'

Basch shifted, 'Aye, well enough, but it is the duty of those older than they to ensure they live to see those consequences out. To allow them to walk into odds unknown...'

Balthier shifted from his lounging repose, 'I am not overly fond of the idea of walking into almost certain death, either, Captain, and I am younger than you,' Balthier smirked ironically tugging at his cuffs, 'Are you going to prevent _me_ from fighting as well?'

Basch looked sour and Penelo had to resist a grin of pure triumph as she realised that Basch would struggle to argue his way around _that_ using his previous point. She was therefore in the position of finding herself grateful to Balthier for his intersession (Fran also, but she did not mind that half as much as she minded feeling indebted to Balthier).

The irony was that Penelo had no desire to fight, or die. She did not want to go with the others out of pride or a desire for revenge, it was simply that she had come this far and ultimately, all she wanted, one way or the other, was to go home.

Balthier walked casually past Penelo on his way back out of the manse, Fran following in his wake. He paused as he stepped through the threshold of the doorway and looked steadily back at Penelo.

'I think our two little street urchins have earned the right to throw their lives away in a pointless, heroic manner, if that is their wish.'

He smiled sharply, for Penelo's eyes only, 'In any effect I have just spent hours of my valuable time teaching them the rudiments of flight. Should anything befall Fran or I you will need these two to escape Bahamut.'

Then, with that as his parting shot, Balthier (and Fran) departed, presumably to make ready the Strahl and prepare for their dawn flight. Penelo watched the two sky pirates go and wondered, had they done her a favour by taking her side, or simply allowed her to condemn herself?

* * *

_We are our appetites and not our philosophies; we devour each other with every glance._

Dawn was five hours away and Penelo felt as if she could not stand it anymore. Once Vaan had returned and had his own occasion to bemoan the mere suggestion that he and Penelo would be left behind (finally putting to rest any notion Ashe or Basch might have had of sparing either of them the horrors of the upcoming battle) the evening had come in with the tide on a wave of strange, unsettled, anticipation.

For Penelo, Vaan, Basch and Ashe there was little to do but eat, make stilted conversation about trivialities and retire to bed early. More than once as Penelo choked down her evening meal (which was lovely but she had no appetite) she had found herself envious of Balthier and Fran, who had at least the Strahl and their flight preparations to take their minds off things.

It was the dead of night now, and crouched in a corner of her borrowed room, in her loaned white nightgown, staring at the pale ghost silhouette of the easel across the room from her, Penelo felt as if she was drowning.

She was suffocating on her fear, which crawled under her skin like a hundred thousand millipedes. She imagined that she could feel their many, many legs pitter-pattering over her exposed nerves and flesh, driving her quietly insane.

It would take a whole day to fly from Balfonheim, halfway across the known face of Ivalice, to Dalmasca and after that...after that...

After that she could be dead; not just her but Vaan as well. In less than two days she could be dead.

Penelo was just barely seventeen; she had turned seventeen during her journey with Ashe, but had not felt it appropriate to mention it to anyone (though Vaan had picked her a Posey of wild flowers to mark the occasion). She could not imagine what it would be like to no longer exist.

What if there was no afterlife, or what if there was? How could she face all her family and tell them that she had failed and died as well; the last of their family line, with her every trace of her family would be wiped clean from Ivalice forever.

What if, were she to reach the afterlife, she discovered that her family were not there to welcome her, what then? Or what if she and Vaan became separated after death and she found herself all alone for eternity? Was it a terrible thing to hope that should she die, that Vaan would be there with her? It must be monstrous to hope that he too would die and follow her into the next life.

The lights from fishing schooners out on the flat, steady, gray roll of the ocean beyond her window cast bright white shards of light over her walls. Those bars of light and shadow seemed a prison to her eyes.

Everything that was, was bearing down on her, crushing her from overhead like an avalanche; she could not breathe and the night sounds seemed to fade in and out of focus. The ocean waves were alternately a hissing roar and then too faint to hear above the pounding of the blood in her ears. The shadows and muted greys painting her room in sombre mourning tones seemed harsh to her eyes.

Penelo did not know why she was so scared now; she had feared that she might die during this strange quest many times before. Was it because, even if they won, it would all soon come to an end?

Could she really be so fickle, so confused, that she was as terrified of what victory would bring, and all its uncertainties with it, as she was of defeat?

Penelo curled herself up into a little, sweaty ball of misery and rocked back and forth, arms tight about her drawn up knees, trying to breathe through her nose with her lips tight shut, lest she end up screaming and screaming until she died of lack of air.

The faintest whisper of footsteps outside her door jarred her from her solitary collapse into panic and madness and Penelo lurched, ungainly, to her feet and ran to her door.

She wrenched open her door in time to see Balthier's head disappear down the stairs, where the staircase curved at an angle from her doorway. He did not appear to notice her standing panting in panic in the threshold of her room.

Without thinking, without pausing even to put on proper clothes and shoes, she ran after him.

He was already out of the manse when she reached the bottom of the stairs and she heedlessly threw open the front door and chased his jaunty, confident moon darkened silhouette through the glass littered cobbled streets of Balfonheim Port in her bare feet.

He stopped abruptly, having detected that he was followed some time ago, just before the looming grey ghost of the Aerodrome. Penelo however did not even so much as slow down and instead she all but launched herself, sobbing almost uncontrollably, into his arms.

'Ugn...what in the...?'

Whatever curse or exclamation of surprise he had planned to make was crushed out of him as Penelo locked her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his velvet and leather vest hard enough that she felt that she would either find herself walking through him, or she would break every bone in her face.

'Penelo? Good gods, girl, what are you doing running about at night in your nightwear...and, sweet gods, you are bare foot.'

Balthier sounded more alarmed and surprised by this than he had almost anything else that had happened to them all throughout this venture and it was enough to force Penelo to look up at him, 'I c-can't...I...I...'

Words failed her as she struggled to breathe and regain her composure. Balthier, looking down on her from his lofty height, frowned and glanced about him at the walls of packing crates and trails of abandoned rope that created the backdrop to their scene of woe; he began to tap his foot in agitation.

'I suppose you had best come in with me, can't have you being abducted by ne'er-do-well's right before we all charge off to our noble suicide, eh?'

Penelo flinched violently at the off-colour jest, 'Don't!...Just...don't even joke about it.'

She snapped more harshly and with far more vehemence than she had meant. Immediately she withdrew from Balthier and slapped a hand across her mouth. All around her the shadows took on sinister aspect and the dullness of the grey pre-dawn night seemed black as pitch and impenetrable.

Balthier, who had been watching her darting eyes and shivering, nightgown swathed frame, quirked an eyebrow, 'Ah, I see. Having a little communion with your own mortality, are you dearest?'

'W-what?'

'Oh, it's perfectly natural,' Balthier continued as he turned and strolled off towards a side door leading directly into the Aerodrome hangars and by-passing the public foyer.

'And this is the witching hour, after all. The time of suicides and awkward questions we can no longer keep at bay. It is only fitting that a girl going off to war, and most probable death, should be a little skittish.'

His voice floated back to her along with his long shadow as he led the way through the eerily deserted aerodrome hangar. The grated metal flooring dug into her feet and she tip-toed after him and the hulking shadows of sleeping airships loomed up from the fuzzy mists of grey obscurity like lurking behemoths of metal.

'Balthier,' she piped up as she saw that he made for the Strahl, which somehow did not look nearly as frightening as the other airships in the dark, 'Balthier...if I die...if I die then no one will ever remember my mother and father, or all my brothers. It will be as if they never existed.'

As he lowered the boarding ramp of the Strahl (which fell with an almost soundless whisper of greeting) Balthier turned back to her with an odd expression on his face, 'and that is what concerns you, not that you should die, when you have yet to live, but that you will no longer stand as a living tomb for dead men?'

Penelo stopped dead in her tracks to hear the harshness in his tone and the breath left her body all at once. Balthier advanced on her and gripped her shoulders tightly. A thrill of something hot and liquid ran through her entire body at the unsolicited and unexpected touch.

'Listen closely now, my girl, for I'll not say this again: life is for the living and the dead are as dust under foot; nothing. If all you live for is to be a fleshly sepulchre for dead peasantry then you are better off joining them in the grave.'

Penelo did not think he could have hurt her more if he had slapped her and kicked her to the floor. She tore free of his grip and it felt as if her chest would cave in from the shock that passed through her in an audible gasp.

'How can you be so monstrous; do you care about nothing? Is nothing sacred to you?'

She did not realise she had shouted until the echoes rebounded off the roof of the hangar and the metal sides of the Strahl to slap her coldly in the face. Balthier simply watched her, face saturnine and remote. He seemed as alien and unfeeling as the vehicles of metal all about them.

What had possessed her to chase after him; how could she have thought that she would find comfort or compassion from a man who had carved out his heart and soul and sold it for a pair of wings?

'Hyram and Vassili, those were their names,' Balthier's cool voice floated through the still, faintly oily air of the hangar.

'Whose names?' she whispered the sudden inexplicable statement throwing her off kilter.

'My elder brothers; Hyram and Vassili of the family Bunansa,' Balthier's lip curled slightly upon uttering his own last name.

'I didn't know you had brothers.' She whispered.

Balthier smiled humourlessly and she thought she saw the glint of teeth in the moonlight, as savage as a Silver Lobo's snarl.

'I don't, that is the point. They both died long before my birth but that did not stop my father comparing his dead infants to his living son...and less than favourably I might add. I don't say these things to you to be hurtful; I merely know what it is to feel like nothing more than the one that lived.'

Despite the shadow and the darkness, despite the veil of grey that stifled every living colour, Penelo saw Balthier's eyes as he looked upon her. She swallowed, 'The one that lived?'

'They call it survivor guilt, those that make a living prescribing the illness and infirmity of the mind. It is common enough. Those who survive when those dearest to them do not tend to feel as though they must in some way justify that continued existence, or pay penance for it.'

Penelo took one step forward towards Balthier and then another and another after that, until she was before him. She tilted her chin to look up at him standing barely a hairbreadth from touching. He looked down on her and an almost gentle smile curved his lips at the corners.

'It is ironic, isn't it? You and I are nothing alike in experience or temperament and yet, it seems that some of the same ghosts haunt me as do you.'

Deftly Balthier lifted her chin a little higher with one long finger, looking down into her eyes all the while, 'When I was your age, or there about, I almost destroyed myself trying to be what I thought I must be for a father I felt I had let down from the very cradle.'

He paused and the silence was created through the mingling of their breath. Penelo almost unconsciously rose up on her tip-toes, the tumult inside her calmed by the soothing waves of his voice as he told her something he had told perhaps only Fran before, and maybe not even she.

Balthier cupped her chin in his palm and Penelo had the strangest desire to rub her cheek against his hand, almost as she had seen Couerl's scent mark the long grass. She wanted to feel those gun calloused, artist's hands against her skin and savour the sensation. Instead, because she was still somewhat afraid, she closed her eyes and let herself be borne aloft on the current of his confession.

'Soon enough I had but one choice, run away from everything, or take a knife to my throat and be done with the charade.'

Her eyes snapped open in shock and she stared at him aghast. Had he admitted what she thought he had? Balthier smiled dryly at her reaction, 'Hmm, yes, the truth is a sorry thing, don't you think; hardly ever glamorous and usually rather sad.'

'I'm sorry,' she told him, and she was.

She had lost two glorious parents and the best brothers in all Ivalice, but she had at least the comfort of knowing that wherever her family's spirits resided they loved her and had loved her in life. Balthier did not even have that, worse, he almost certainly had proof that his father hadn't cared over much for him at all.

Balthier surprised her by letting go and stepping back with a light chuckle, 'You have nothing to be sorry for, and I did not tell you such hoping for sympathy. I merely wanted to prove a point.' He looked at her sharply, 'Fear is fine, it is probably sensible as it will keep you sharp, but remember what you live _for_ Penelo, or you are no better than a shade.'

Penelo watched him turn his back on her with the memory of his hand still hot against her skin. _What I live for? _But she did not really live for anything. She had no purpose, no calling, no reason to still be living...but then, did she need one? Was it not enough that Penelo breathed and Penelo lived and she laughed and cried and danced on occasion? Was that what Balthier was trying to tell her?

He had decided to live for his own reasons, going so far as to become someone else to do so; maybe it was time Penelo lived too?

She did not know and her head was spinning with questions, so she did something that was becoming worryingly close to habit. She hurried after Balthier as he was moving towards the Strahl's ramp and hooked her fingers into the bindings at the back of his vest.

This time when she jumped up on tip-toe to kiss him she knew what she was doing (though the reason why still eluded her). The difference this time, however, was that Balthier did not push her away.


	7. Chapter 7

_Friendship is the greatest gift that one can never part with; the rich man is he who grows fat on friendship and the brave man is he who cultivates that plenty in others. _

It felt as though her brain had exploded. Behind Penelo's closed eyelids she could see a coruscating kaleidoscope of colour. Pin-wheels and rippling sparks of gold, silver, and proud blue flashed behind her lids. It felt like she was flying, falling, and drowning all at once.

With the confidence and assuredness of someone who has done this so many times as to make of it a habit, Balthier slipped a hand to the small of her back and his fingers spread across her nightgown like a brand sending hot flashes of feeling through her entire body.

Penelo had suspected, in so far as she could be accused of thinking ahead at all, when she reached up to press her lips to Balthier's mouth, that he would calmly and firmly push her away as he had before and make some vaguely snide, but suave, comment before telling her to 'run along back to Vaan' or some such thing.

So when she had felt those strong, long fingered, hands curl over her shoulders she had been completely at ease (already knowing the worst that would happen). She had felt those hands tighten their grip, fingers flexing, and with her lips still pressed to his and her eyes closed, straining on tip-toe, she had waited for him to end the moment before there even was a 'moment' between them.

A split second later and Penelo had realised that it had been incredibly foolish of her to expect Balthier to follow anyone else's script but his own.

Abruptly his hands had slipped from her shoulders; one wrapped around her waist with surprising strength (though he did not crush her against him so that she could not escape, but merely held her steady on her toes) while his free hand cupped her chin.

That was all he did at first to set her whole being on fire as, breath catching and almost drawing back from his lips, Penelo had realised that something was _happening_.

His lips against hers were still but it felt as if some tremendous gravitational pull, equal in the power of a huge magnet, kept her from drawing back from him and the kiss that was not a kiss.

When he began to idly stroke her throat under her tilted chin it had felt like every nerve ending in her body was connected to that patch of skin he tenderly brushed with just the pad of his thumb over her tingling flesh.

Her eyes had popped open and her lips parted in surprise just a fraction and that was when he had truly kissed her.

He didn't force his probing tongue into her mouth; in fact she didn't feel his tongue at all. He simply kissed her lips as chastely as he would kiss her cheek or her hand when he was playing the part of the courtly rogue. It was enough. It was too much.

Now Penelo felt like her insides had become water and threatened to drop between her legs as if she was a leaky bucket (not a pretty metaphor but then Penelo had little experience of the artful side of seduction – or in fact any form of seduction).

She was set all a-quiver by little more than Balthier's thumb rubbing a circle against her bobbing throat, as with deft co-ordination, he started to stroke the tip of his finger behind her ear, at the very sensitive spot where her jaw hinged. It made her ticklish and she felt her lips twitching into an involuntary smile as she wriggled just a little in his arms.

Balthier's chuckle reverberated through his chest and into hers as she leaned against him. That wickedly confident, impossibly _adult_ sound lodged under her breastbone and seemed to squeeze her heart. That chuckle spoke volumes in a language Penelo did not understand and which Balthier spoke fluently.

Penelo was not prepared – for how could she be? – when Balthier brushed a trail of fire hot, soft as a butterfly's wings, kisses down the line of her jaw from her lips to her ear; if it had been physically or Humely possible Penelo would have melted into a puddle at his feet right then and there.

Balthier seemed to know this because he dropped his other hand to her waist and hoisted her easily around to place her halfway up the ramp to the Strahl. This put her at head height with him and allowed her to comfortably rest her hands on his shoulders.

If it had all ended there Penelo would have been happy, giddy even, truth be told. If she had been forced to walk straight to the Bahamut and fight the Empire right then she would have done so with a silly smile on her face and her eyes heavy with a languid sort of dreamy stupor.

Of course Penelo was still a girl and girls were satisfied with that sort of thing. Balthier was a man – and he was not yet satiated.

When he kissed her again, hands holding her firm by the waist, it was not chaste. It was no awkward, messy mesh of tongues but a deliberate, calculated, attempt to draw her soul right out through her tonsils and leave her nothing more than a whimpering, over-sensitised mess on the hangar floor (or at least this was Penelo's view and an accurate description of her feelings).

Frightened that she might scatter to the four winds or shatter under the sheer deluge of sensation, she reached out blindly to grasp his sleeves to keep from falling down. The feel of soft, pettable, cotton and lace under her fingers almost made her stomach roll over.

Her brain was long gone, bouncing and floating on wave after wave of something akin to wild excitement that could almost be a form of panic.

'm….mm!...mm' her fingers clawed reflexively into those sleeves and hooked into the lacings that joined the sleeves to the main body of the shirt. The feel of strong solid shoulders underneath the soft whisper of cloth made her whimper even louder.

'…..mmm?'

Ivalice no longer existed at all for Penelo, all that she knew was the sensation of hanging from a kiss that never seemed to end and wondering, really, why she would ever want to do anything else, or be anywhere else, ever again?

Balthier's hands on her waist were still and held her just a little away from his body. She felt quite safe in that grip. As long as it was just his lips on hers and the faintest promise of teeth like a tease against her bottom lip, she did not feel the need to fear him.

Strangely peaceful her mind floated away to reminisce on yesteryear. Unsurprisingly her memories gravitated to her first ever 'adult' kiss (at the age of eleven) which had been, unsurprisingly, with Vaan. Penelo remembered it vividly.

She remembered how Vaan had grabbed her painfully by the shoulders and sort of slammed her against his chest. Then his tongue had pushed into her mouth and sort of swished about inside for a moment; needless to say that had been their only kiss. Neither one of them had enjoyed the experience, and both had agreed to never speak of it again.

'……mmm…..mm…'

The present condensed down to blinding shivers of pure physical sensation as she was drawn inexorably back into her body. The fabric friction of her cotton nightgown bunching and wrinkling against her skin, as strong, confident hands moved minutely over it, nearly stole her breath away.

If her eyes weren't tight closed she was sure she would be crying from the simply overwhelming intensity when Balthier lifted one hand to gather a handful of her unbound blonde hair and pull it idly through his fingers from her scalp to the tip.

She really felt she might explode, or sprout wings and burst like a rocket through the roof of the aerodrome hangar and up into the night sky beyond the stars.

'mmmm...oooooommmm,'

'Shhh,' he breathed against her lips and Penelo finally heard the strange mewling sounds that she had been making for some time now, 'Stop that. It is oddly arousing and I am trying to regain control of this……situation.'

'Huh?'

It was neither intelligent nor sophisticated but Penelo did not care. All she cared about was the fact that Balthier was plucking her fingers from his shirt and had already stepped away from her.

Like a lily bending towards the sun Penelo leaned toward him anyway, intent on falling back into his arms. She felt languid and slow and almost intoxicated.

No one had ever touched her like he did. In fact no one had ever treated her like he did; ignoring and denigrating her as a child one moment and talking seriously to her about all manner of personal things the next. It shocked Penelo to realise that she did not want to lose this strange – something – she had with Balthier.

Perhaps that had been the reason she had chased him through the Balfonheim streets in the first place?

Penelo wasn't even really conscious of moving but she must have done for Balthier took another step back and raised his hand as if to ward her off, 'That's close enough I think. Be a good girl and stay there.'

Penelo blinked at him confused as Balthier tugged at his cuffs distractedly and shook his head, deliberately not looking at her, 'I really think it is high time you were abed, my dear,' for a moment an odd expression passed across his expression, 'by that I mean, of course, your _own_ bed.'

He added, unnecessarily, in Penelo's opinion, but then Balthier appeared a trifle nervous – or flustered, which considering how little time he spent emoting when his father evaporated before his eyes and Fran almost died was somewhat shocking to Penelo.

'But – why?' Suddenly nervous now that Balthier was refusing to look at her and with the memory of her previous fear of being alone still a black mark on her consciousness, Penelo began to wring her hands together.

'Why she asks?' Balthier threw his hands up in the air suddenly irritable, 'I should just shoot myself now and be done with the whole sorry mess.' he muttered. 'Fran will emasculate me for this without a doubt.'

Penelo, still standing on the ramp where he had put her, watched in total confusion as he turned his back and began to walk away from the Strahl. She had a moment of encroaching panic as the quiet and stillness of the night-time hangar closed in on her again and then Balthier threw her a look over his shoulder.

'Well come on then, girl, chop, chop.'

He actually clicked his fingers as if hailing a pet or domesticated beast of burden. Penelo just stared at him, eyes very wide and breathing quickening as the euphoria of his touch left her and she came down with a bump and jolt.

Balthier turned about to face her, scowling, 'Do you want to walk yourself back to the Manse or are you intending to sleep on the hangar floor, hmm?'

Penelo could only continue to stare at him as the blood froze in her cheeks and her heart squeezed closed, 'You are getting rid of me?'

'Ah, so you catch on at last,' he purred snidely and jerked his head at her, not even bothering to click his fingers this time. Penelo's hands curled into fists so tight she could feel her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms. She shook her head, too furious to dare speak.

Balthier sighed, undoubtedly able to sense the fury and hurt that radiated from her body in almost visible waves. 'Penelo….'

'Why?' The volume of her hurt and confusion bounced from the high ceiling of the hangar and rippled through the grey and black patchwork of the night. Balthier closed his eyes and shook his head.

Tears stung Penelo's own eyes as she whipped about on her toes and ran up the ramp and into the Strahl. He would not be getting rid of her that easily.

* * *

_One man says he sees all things in black and white relief. Another says that everything is shades of gray but I prefer to see in colour; me thinks it best that way._

'Penelo?'

She heard Balthier call after him and then she heard his muttered Archadian curses as he bounded up the ramp in pursuit.

'What are you playing at? Come back out here this instance.'

Without hesitation she ran through the narrow, claustrophobic, corridor of the minuscule sleeping area of the Strahl and shoved open the door that she knew led to Balthier's cabin.

She didn't spare a glance at her surroundings (even though neither she nor any other member of the party, save Fran, had been allowed to enter the 'captain's cabin'). Instead she threw herself down on the narrow bunk bolted to the wall and had time to brush her nightgown carefully down over her knees before Balthier appeared in the threshold looking less than impressed.

'Are you insane?' he inquired in very cool tone. 'Or are you merely trying my patience on purpose?'

It was difficult to look defiant while lying flat on her back in his bunk, the scent of him rising from his pillow curling through her brain and setting her stomach to twirling with a strange excitement despite her predicament. Silently she shook her head.

Balthier closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the doorframe, 'Penelo, whatever you are trying to prove, or if you are simply hysterical, I have neither the energy nor the inclination to indulge you tonight.'

He straightened from the doorframe and tried to affix his usual cool indifferent mask upon his face, but some deeper motion, be it irritation mere fatigue or something else, prevented him from completely expunging all expression. To Penelo he looked tired and just a little harassed.

'Tomorrow we could all die a long and protracted death and I want to be at my best,' he began again doing his utmost to patronise her, 'so be a good girl and run along now, hmm?'

He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers against the furrow in his brow as if he had a sudden headache.

'You kissed me.'

His eyes opened and he stared at her with rather tired, rather cynical, brown eyes, 'Technically you initiated the contact, for the second time in as many days, I might add.'

Penelo sat up carefully, making sure that her nightgown did not ride up as she pushed upwards and that everything was covered that should be covered.

'You kissed me back. You kissed my neck and stroked my hair. Your hands were on me.'

Penelo felt a little like a laundry woman pulling out the memory of all that had passed between them like freshly washed sheets to be hung out on the line to dry. She wanted to try and make sense of it all.

Balthier winced, 'I know.' the confession came out on a long suffering sigh.

He did not sound happy about any of what had happened and Penelo felt heat and shame creep under her skin, 'Did I do it wrong is that why you are suddenly so cold? Did I make a mistake?'

She wasn't sure what motivated the question except that for the first time it had dawned on her that a man (a real one, not Vaan, who she had known since they were both in the cradle) could touch her and not make her sick with fear.

Tonight she had learned that she could feel something other than helpless as a Dreamhare in the teeth of a Worgen when being touched by a man. She wasn't quite sure what she had felt, precisely, but whatever it was she'd enjoyed it.

Balthier was staring at her as if he would dearly like to be anywhere but stuck in a room with her and Penelo felt suddenly small and hideous. She hunched her shoulders and tucked her knees up against her chest, assuming her near foetal protective stance.

Balthier sighed and entered the cabin flopping into the chair by the tiny round table bolted to the floor, the only other pieces of furniture (save the closed cupboards fitted into the wall) within the tiny cabin.

'Of course you haven't done anything wrong,' he finally admitted, though he did not sound particularly friendly towards her either as he fixed her with remote and opaque dark eyes, 'instead I find myself to blame. I am a grown man; I should be governed by something more than libido.'

She uncoiled a little as Balthier leaned his head back against the wall of the cabin behind him and closed his eyes. Suddenly it occurred to her that in mere hours he would be expected to fly them halfway across Ivalice and it probably wasn't a good idea that he should be up so late.

Still she could not bring herself to leave. She didn't _want_ to leave and it wasn't just because the idea of being alone in her borrowed room in the Manse waiting for the dawn, and perhaps the last day of her life, filled her with gut-churning panic.

In need of a distraction Penelo looked about her at the room and for the first time noticed that the wall across from the bunk was lined with clocks.

Walnut framed circular clocks and clocks with swinging pendulum, clocks made of brass with strange pictograms instead of numbers, and clocks carved of dark hued word and worked with runes; Penelo had never seen so many clocks outside of a clockmakers shop.

Once she had noticed them she also recognised the strange disparate ticking sound that she had barely noticed before, but which now sounded impossibly loud, came from each one of the clocks. She frowned as she realised that each clock, whether it be round, square, wood, glass or brass was all telling a different time.

Fascinated Penelo rose and walked over to the wall, passing very close to Balthier as he lounged in the chair, as she looked up at the clicking and ticking clocks.

After a while the noise of hundreds of different seconds counting down to a different beat smoothed out into a strange melody like the irregular beating of a dozen heartbeats.

'You must like clocks.'

Penelo winced at her own foolishness and looked sharply over at Balthier who was watching her with a droll expression and one elbow resting on the table top and chin propped on his fist.

'Hmm.'

'They all tell a different time; which one is right?'

Balthier roused himself to answer, 'They all are. Each tells the time of one of the capital cities of Ivalice. I travel widely and like to know _when _I am as well as _where _I am.'

Penelo glanced at him and toyed with the question on the tip of her tongue, but let in die unspoken. Balthier sighed and spoke with his eyes closed as he eased a crick from the back of his neck.

'Third from the left; the one of the coloured glass; that is Dalmascan time.'

Penelo blinked but did not waste breath verbalising her surprise that he would know what she had not had courage to ask him. Quietly she moved over to the coloured glass clock with the filigree gold hands.

'The sun hasn't even set back home.'

She whispered, marvelling at how strange it was that back in Rabanastre all the people she had left behind were still living out the day that she had already lost. It seemed so strange to think that she was plunging forward towards the dawn and they had yet to say goodnight to yesterday's sun.

'Hmm, and in Laksheem in westermost Rozzaria the sun on the day before this one has yet to rise. Ivalice is vast, Penelo, no matter what it seems, somewhere there is always time left.'

She turned towards him a smile touching her lips, 'That sounds nice; sometimes I think that everything goes too fast and I'm running to catch up,' she sighed and tried not to twist her hands before her.

'Sometimes it seems like I spend all my time chasing just to find that when I've caught up I've lost everything I had before. It would be nice to go backwards and steal back yesterday.'

To her surprise Balthier chuckled and she turned towards him, 'Once, when I had little else to do, I 'appropriated' an airship and decided to race the sun. Started on the eastern-most islands of the Empire, where they say the sun rises first, and attempted to circumnavigate my way around Ivalice with the sun at my heels.'

Penelo stepped closer drawn in both by the story and by the softly wistful tone of his voice, 'What happened?'

A strange smile brushed his lips, neither cynical nor smug, 'Somewhere near the Rozzarian border with the great Deyba Desert beyond the Sandsea, some twenty-eight hours into my flight, I fell asleep and crashed the ship.'

Penelo's eyes widened but Balthier further surprised her by laughing again and his eyes seemed lightened by a genuine mirth.

'Gods, I haven't thought about that in years.' He shook his head, 'I couldn't have been more than eighteen – hadn't even made Fran's acquaintance at the time, nor gained possession of the Strahl.'

Penelo edged closer as Balthier seemed lost in a reminiscence that suffused his usually cool, almost haughty, features with unusual warmth.

'Did you get hurt?'

He looked up at her as she came to rest just before him, her nightgown swathed legs brushing his knees, 'Hmm?'

'In the crash?'

Balthier looked amused and his face was more open than she had even seen it, even as his eyes clouded with a sweetened patina of comfortable memory.

'No, no; at least nothing that I have bothered to remember. Had the luck to witness the most spectacular of sunrises when the sun finally caught up with me as the airship burned; the first time I had ever seen the sun rise over the desert I believe.'

Penelo hesitated fidgeting on her feet as her knees brushed his. 'Did you draw it?'

He looked at her curiously and she swallowed before repeating her question, 'Did you draw the sunrise?'

For a long moment she thought he would not answer her and she began to feel uncomfortable as he looked steadily seemingly right through her. After a moment he shifted and sat up straighter in his chair, 'As a matter of fact, I think I did.'

Penelo bit her lip on a tiny little smile, obscurely pleased that she knew him well enough to have guessed right. Balthier was still watching her and the pull of his eyes drew her head up to look on him.

'You have absolutely no intention of going back to your room, do you?'

Penelo twisted her hands together and shook her head mutely. Balthier sighed and reached out to untangle her knotted hands. Still holding one of her hands in each of his he rose smoothly from the chair and turned her around, leading her by her captured arms, toward the bunk.

'You have perhaps three hours, Archadian time, to sleep before I will forcibly evict you from my ship to dress and make ready for travel.'

Balthier pushed her down by the shoulders onto the bunk, 'Therefore I suggest you go to sleep, my girl, for come tomorrow this cabin will be off limits to all.'

Penelo blinked up at him, once more wrong footed by his mercurial change in mood, 'What about you; shouldn't you get some sleep too? This is your bunk, after all.'

Penelo had already reasoned that Balthier did not sleep much at the Manse but instead preferred to sleep aboard his ship even while docked in the aerodrome hangar.

Balthier shook his head, an oddly impish smirk playing over his lips as he crouched before her on the floor.

'That bunk is a tad too narrow for two,' he looked up at her with dark eyes swimming with a hidden mirth that seemed to mock her and celebrate her in equal measure, 'Rest assured my dear, you and I shall never sleep together.'

Penelo flinched even as the blood in her veins combusted with embarrassment, 'I…I did not……why not?'

The words were out before she could stop them and Penelo almost recoiled at her own audacity. Balthier smirked with his usual drolly sardonic amusement but his eyes did not seem quite so distant. Laughing behind his mask the whole time he clasped her face in both hands gently as he leaned toward her.

'Because I am far too fond of you, my dear, to ruin such a friendship,' he whispered against her lips even as he kissed her.

Penelo closed her eyes and leaned in towards that kiss, feeling like a freshly unfurled flower as it opens to the sun's first light. He pulled away before she was ready to come back down out of the clouds and swiftly rose to his feet.

'Sweet dreams, dearest,' he called back from the cabin's threshold with dapper cheer, 'For we could all be dead on the morrow.'

As last words went at least his had the benefit of being prophetic, Penelo would come to think, three days later when Ashe finally called off the search for bodies amid the Bahamut's wreckage.

_If memory and prejudice is all that separate us from the animals then take me to the wild things and leave me be. My heart is heavy and my mind cannot forget. _


	8. Chapter 8

_The fanfare has faded and the parade has passed me by. I am alone in victory and my enemy wears a smile._

The night after Ashe rode back into the city to the palace on the back of a silver Chocobo with Vaan and Penelo at her side and the streets thronged with weeping, screaming joyous Rabanastrans, was the night the riots broke out in Low Town.

Two years of oppression, fear, and prejudice reached boiling point and the people of Rabanastre, men and women, and even children, Penelo had known all her life, became strangers – villains all – as they surged up from under the city to attack the departing Imperial regiments.

For two years those clanking, hidden men, with their gruff and crude voices had ruled over her kinsmen. They had driven the shop-keepers from their homes above the Bazaar and shoved the women and children into the sewers. The tales of the Imperial soldiers' abuses had become so well known they barely rated repeating. Yet Penelo was still unprepared for the tide of vengeance that turned even the kindest Rabanastran soul into a monster.

On the very night of Rabanastre's liberation, when men and women should have been dancing in the streets and savouring a new tomorrow, they instead gathered clumsy clubs of wood and kitchen knives, draped their knuckles in metal, and made weapons from socks filled with sand and stones.

Like packs of baying Lobos they prowled the streets of their home with flaming torches and tracked the Imperials through the streets. Once again, just like the night of the Imperials arrival, the children were forced into hiding under the stairs and in cellars, as bloody vengeance painted the streets.

The first man to fall to the tide of Rabanastre's stoked fury broke Penelo's heart.

She and Vaan, tempered by battle and no longer able to cower in a cupboard under the stairs had taken to the streets as well. They chased down the madness that had stolen over friends and family alike, trying to stem the flood of violence before it broke over the city.

Somehow, in the chaos of the flickering torches, the curses and the cruel shouts, the crack and splinter of broken glass and the pounding of furious feet on cobbles, Penelo had become separated from Vaan.

Hurrying through the streets of her home, made unfamiliar through long absence, and the ugly pall of fear that pervaded the dark night, where not a single star dared light the way of the mob, Penelo ran.

Loaded down with her satchel of curatives and healing supplies she skidded over the carpet of glass shards and jumped over the cracked and shattered boards of doors ripped from hinges.

Houses had been ransacked and the mob, howling with one monstrous voice, had broken down doors and shattered windows seeking out Imperials hiding in the buildings that had once been Rabanatran family homes.

Penelo was skittering past the fountain at the South Gate when the explosion rocked the ground under her feet. She stumbled against the lip of the fountain and as she right her balance she noticed, in the orange glare of the fireball devouring a house across the plaza, writing daubed across the wall of a nearby building.

_Burn the Imperial scum – make them bleed like the pigs they are._

Underneath the wicked declaration Penelo saw the slumped form of a man, head lolling on his chest, and one leg bent at a monstrous angle. She was moving before she was consciously aware of it, beginning the incantation for Curaga as she threw herself to her knees beside the man.

He was not in armour but instead in his night clothes. Her countrymen, her neighbours, and her friends, had dragged this young man from his bed and beaten him like a dog before leaving him to die in the street.

Her hands shook as she stared at his compound fractured left leg, the white nub of bone protruding from ruptured flesh. His dark hair, inky black and fine (reminding her of Larsa's) was matted with blood. His face was pale under a patchwork of contusions and blossoming bruises.

Trembling Penelo reached out and placed a hand glowing with green-white healing magick to the man's chest. The body groaned, shifting in pain and suffering as the healing magick revived him a little. He lifted his head to stare up at Penelo with one blackened eye swollen and welded shut and the other dazed with pain.

'You!'

Penelo recoiled in horror, jerking her hand back, as a wave of memory, as vibrant and all-consuming as the Mist wave that had erupted from the Pharos of Ridorana, assailed her.

_The memory of a man's hands on her bare skin, a man's body bearing down on her, pushing her down to the hard, cold ground, riding her down like an unbroken Chocobo, his breath in her face hot as the furnaces of the underworld, strong fingers curled around her forearms, nails digging into her flesh and big, wet teeth so close to her own mouth..._

The Imperial soldier caught her arm as she tried to stand. She quivered with the desire to turn tail and run away from this man she had not seen in two years but whose face frequented her nightmares. As she jerked her grip from his fumbling fingers they left blood stains, black as tar in the darkness, across her bare arms.

'……y..you are that young lady from Low Town, the one….' the man's voice was barely more than a thread as he peered up at her through a mask of drying blood with one dark eye that just for a moment reminded her of another black eyed Archadian.

Penelo shook her head rapidly, forgetting why she was here this night that reminded her so strongly of that other night two years ago. Memory and nightmare yawned open and swallowed her whole.

_Hot, slick, sweat oiled skin sliding and grinding against her own. The rough bit of cold, scuffed stone under her back, digging into her shoulder blades and she fought helplessly to get out from underneath the man. The stink of ale, hot and fetid, blasting her face as the man's breath dampened her hair. _

Tears prickled her eyelids and her chest contracted violently as in the present of this horrid night, where Ashe's victory and all their sacrifice was brought down to dust by the anger, the fury, and the stupidity of the very people they had fought for, the man she had feared to face for two years weakly reached for her again.

'……Please miss, it ain't safe f'yer to be out on a night like this…..urhhh……anger makes beasts o' all men. Miss, yer must find shelter. With the rising o'the sun all will be right as rain again, yer'll see.'

_She remembered the sheer mind shattering terror and incomprehension as Mr Haralambos, the man who had been her father's business partner in their small leather goods store, had lunged at her. The soup and bread she had brought the man in the picnic basket she had prepared especially by hand, spilled out across the floor of the hovel in Low Town Mr Haralambos drank his days away in since the occupation. _

_The warm, inviting scent of Cluckatrice soup, mingled with the scent of blood, as her nails tore into the shoulders of the man above her. _

_She had not screamed back then, as the man (her father's friend, a man who had given her piggy-back rides as a little girl) used his large hands that had once made harnesses and saddles and all manner of delicate leather goods, to push apart her legs. She did not scream because she simply could not fathom that this was happening. _

_How could someone she had known all her life become a monster; how could a man, any man, turn upon a girl of fourteen who had simply tried to bring him food and company in his misery? _

'_Oi you! Stop!' _

_Penelo had not registered the sound of the voice or the clank of armoured feet, until gauntleted hands had wrenched the drunkard Haralambos off of her and thrown him roughly into the wall. _

_Too scared to cry Penelo had scuttled backwards across the rough floor and into a corner of the room, where she curled up in fear as the Imperial (the enemy, the evil that had ruined her life and stolen Rabanastre's freedom) punched the slurring, snarling Haralambos in the nose and knocked him out. _

_Then slowly the metal menace, who had seemingly saved her, had turned to face her, a man of metal, face hidden behind an impenetrable helmet and Penelo's breathing had stopped altogether. _

_If her own countryman, and a man who was known to her, could become a fiend in Hume guise, attacking her for no reason, then what horrors would a soulless Imperial perpetrate upon her?_

_The soldier raised his gauntleted hands and pulled off his helmet, letting it crash to the floor with a hard crack of metal against stone. _

'_There now love, no need to fret, yer a-right now.' _

_Penelo stared up into the face of the enemy revealed and saw not a monster with cruel eyes of steel but a young man with inky black hair and dark, kindly eyes who squatted down on the ground level with her and reached out one hand, maintaining a careful distance. _

'_Are yer hurt? Don't look like that bloody drunken sot did yer damage, but I can take yer t'barracks an' get yer seen t' if'n yer like?' _

_Penelo was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She could only stare in total incomprehension as the man continued to hold out his hand and talk to her in soft, low, soothing tones. _

_She stared into that man's eyes and could see only concern. She stared as deep as she could willing herself to see the hate and cruelty she had been told was in all Imperials, but all she saw was Hume-kindness._

'_What's yer name petal?' he continued and even his strange, guttural, rough speech did not sound grating or vicious to her ears as it always had before when she had heard the words of the other Imperials._

'_Me name is Timonda. Now, now, pet, I'll not hurt you, so stop yer tears, a-right?' _

_She stared at that hand, held out across the distance between, and into the eyes of the enemy who had saved her, and it was all too much. She did not understand how this could be; an Imperial showed her kindness and a Rabanastran abused her? If she could not trust her kin to be kind and her enemy to be merciless then what could she depend on? _

_What manner of world did she live in that evil could wear the face of a friend and kindness belonged to the object of her hate? _

_With sudden violence fourteen year old Penelo had lunged forward shoving the Imperial in the chest as hard as she could and running from the building faster, almost, than her legs could carry her. She never saw Timonda again but his unsolicited kindness had haunted her ever more._

_Until this night._

The lights of the mob's torches grew brighter and the flames devouring the row of houses across the plaza stroked heat against her back. Penelo reached out a shaking hand once more to Timonda, the Imperial who had come to her aid and showed her kindness all those years ago, 'My name is Penelo, Mr Timonda.'

The man smiled at her and she saw that his front teeth had been knocked out, 'Penelo? What a pretty name.'

She bit her lip on tears as she summoned healing magick to her hands aware, with every frantic heartbeat, of the thunder of the mob approaching. She wondered if they could scent the blood of Imperial in the night air.

'…..Miss, t'mob will be back in no time. They'll not recognise friend from foe in this fervour…..urgn…..please miss….I begs yer, be off wit' yer while there's still time.'

'No.'

Penelo pressed her hands, cupping healing magick, over the shattered bone in his leg, the worst of his many injuries, and he stifled a cry of pain.

She would not leave this man. She would not let one good man die simply because he was born Archadian and found himself on the losing side of a war the Empire had believed long won.

If she let Timonda die, Penelo knew with bedrock certainty, she would never be able to walk unafraid again.

For just a moment, as the strobe red and orange sulphur flashes of the mob's torches rounded a corner into the plaza and the first shout denoted that they had been detected, Penelo's mind flashed back to the last night in Balfonheim, the last time she had battled with her fear and slept in the bed of a man with dark Archadian eyes.

That man, the only man she had _never_ feared, was gone now too: dead or merely vanished into legend, she did not know, and she thought it did not really matter. All that mattered was that Penelo had a debt of gratitude to repay to this soldier.

'Penelo!'

Vaan almost vaulted over the fountain as he outran the mob and skidded towards her. There was a gash bisecting his forehead and his hair was wildly tousled from skirmishes with the mob. In the firelight he seemed almost to be glowing like quicksilver.

'Vaan – help me with Timonda – they'll kill him!'

Vaan looked from her to the bleeding, only half-conscious, Imperial beside her who was still dressed in his tattered cotton pyjama's and bare feet. Without a word Vaan reached down and threw the man's arm over his shoulders and hefted him up. He asked no questions of why she wanted to save a member of the occupation forces, or why she knew his name.

Penelo had never loved Vaan more than she did at that very moment.

Rushing to Timonda's other side she pulled his free arm across her shoulders and she and Vaan did their best to run with him as the mob bayed and screamed behind them.

She and Vaan ducked and dived through the narrow, twisted, streets of home, the shadows of the night leaping out to harass them, and the firelight burning up the darkness behind their backs. Penelo began to despair; they would never escape with Timonda dead-weight in their arms.

In less time than it took to tell of it she, Vaan, and Timonda, were backed up against a dead-end; the vast city wall rising up like an immutable barrier preventing escape. As one, the three of them turned to meet the faceless mob; each formless aggressor forged of hate and darkness and daubed in the blood of their former oppressors.

In the blinking of an eye and turning of fate the roles of victim and aggressor, virtuous and villainous had been reversed and Ashe's new horizon for Ivalice was lost before the new sun had risen.

Vaan's hand reached out to grasp Penelo's arm across Timonda's body as they hit the wall with their backs and stared into the mass of fire flecked bodies moving in on them, intent on tearing them limb from limb. She and Vaan shared one glance over Timonda's hanging head and Vaan smiled.

'Huh, guess we won't get to be sky pirates after all.'

A bugle horn sounded through the night and Penelo jolted as the skittering clatter of a dozen Chocobo mounted Dalmascan cavalry filled the narrow alley. The new arrivals crowded into the mob with pikes drawn.

The leader of the cavalry charge, mounted on a Chocobo whose head was plumed with white gold, lifted the visor of her helmet and Ashe's furious iced grey eyes seemed to rake over every obscured face in the mob.

'What is the meaning of this? How dare you raise arms in my city when I have decreed that no harm should befall the departing Archadian troops; disperse at once or I shall have you all thrown into the Nalbina dungeons!'

As Ashe quelled the mob with no more than her anger and barbed voice, Penelo and Vaan slunk through the crowds with Timonda in tow.

'Miss…..why did yer do this fer me? I'm jus' an Imperial.'

Timonda asked in vague and confused voice on the edge of consciousness as they finally found the Imperial army cruiser docked outside the city that would take Timonda and the other soldiers home come the first light of dawn.

Penelo smiled as she rooted in her satchel for a collection of healing potions and pushed them into Timonda's hands, 'Because you were kind to me, Mr Timonda, and I never did say thank you.'

She and Vaan watched the Imperial Cruiser depart the city as the sun rose over the desert, and as it, did Penelo finally felt like the war she had fought for two years was truly over.

She did not have to be afraid any more.

* * *

_If I die tomorrow, how would you know I lived? Is this body, flesh and blood as any other, mine; or am I merely prisoner within my own anonymous flesh? _

After the Imperial army had left Rabanastre life began to return, if not to what it had been before, then to something that promised to one day be better than any life they had lost.

Still it took a month after Bahamut's fall before Penelo plucked up the courage to enter the Strahl.

Vaan, under Nono's suspiciously watchful eyes, had spent hours teaching himself what each knob, button, and dial on the Strahl did, and eventually he all but dragged Penelo from Migelo's store for the first (non Bahamut related) flight.

The flight was uneventful; they merely ducked and dived over the Sandsea and down to the Ozmone Plains, stopped for a visit with the Garif at Jahara, and then returned to the aerodrome.

Afterwards as Vaan poked about in the engine room and annoyed Nono with his mere presence, Penelo snuck into Balthier's cabin.

Entering the stillness of the cabin she felt like an intruder, even though she had once barged in without invitation and had spent three peaceful hours dozing in this very bunk while listening to the rhythmic ticking of his dozen clocks.

The air inside the cabin was cool and even the ticking of the clocks seemed muted and subdued. The stillness and quiet seemed almost like a form of mourning.

Rubbing her bare arms against the slight chill, Penelo began her covert and methodical search. The easel with the incomplete portrait of her was most likely still tucked into a corner of her old room in Reddas' manse, but somewhere in this neat, small, space Balthier must have kept his art supplies.

An hour later, after she had rooted through carefully folded piles of white cotton shirts, letting her fingers caress the soft cloth and brush against the gold thread at the cuffs, she found that which she sought.

The art supply case she remembered from the night she had first kissed him was found, ironically enough, after she had exhausted all other possible places, tucked under the sleeping bunk and secured for flight by a tether of rope attached to a hook on the wall under the bed.

Feeling like a thief indeed, Penelo opened up the valise bag, the butter soft leather comfortably worn under her hands, and peered inside.

She found a sketchbook filled with pictures of Fran (though he had told _her_ Fran did not let him draw her) and even one or two half finished sketches of Ashe that had been started and then abandoned.

As Penelo flicked back through the dog-eared pages a series of incredibly detailed diagrams of Bandercouerls and Panthers, Malboros, and even a Behemoth, stalked across the flapping pages, some of them chased by annotated notes on anatomy as if he was studying the fiends even as he drew them.

When she came to last page her fingers stilled. This image was different than any other, because it had not been completed in impartial black and white. Instead a riot of colour, predominant in pinks and vibrant blues, seemed to jump out at her.

This was no portrait or careful, anatomically correct, sketch of something the eye had seen while he travelled across Ivalice. Instead this was an image of smoke rising from a Bhujerban hookah; the long necked glass tube with its rounded base held a magical swirl of curlicuing smoke and vapour as the pipe and mouth piece sinuously wound about the base of the hookah like a serpent.

The twisting, intermeshing, interweaving curls and whorls of smoke pin-wheeled in drifting pastel colours before her eyes until Penelo began to feel dizzy, almost as if she had been breathing in the weed smoke herself, instead of merely looking at a picture.

It seemed almost as if the serpent tails of the smoke and vapour formed images and pictures of recognisable things to her eyes before falling away into formless dreamy twists and blurs of colour.

Penelo had not known, at first, what she might find when she decided to give in to the dull ache inside her chest and search through Balthier's possessions on the off chance that he had left some token of beauty for her now he was gone.

Now, staring down at this strange, dreamlike image in colours rich as they were gentle, she found herself smiling even as one large tear plopped from her cheek to land on the paper.

Wiping away the tear Penelo closed the sketchbook and replaced the rest of the objects she had taken from the art supply bag before returning it securely to its place under the bunk. She left Balthier's cabin with his notebook her own pilfered prize, clutched closely to her chest.

It was four months later that she visited a reclusive woman in her small house in the east of the city and showed her the page of coloured smoke as she held out her bare arms.

'That is the pattern I want.'

She told the woman, a master of the art of painting flesh, as she laid down the Gil she had saved for the last two weeks.

It took two days in total for the tattoos to be complete; a spreading, meandering, trail of blue and pink serpentine streamers running down her arms from shoulder to wrist, but when they were done Penelo felt a great sense of satisfaction.

Ever since the war had ended Penelo had felt like a stranger staring into a mirror. Her reflection did not fit her soul and the simple, unadorned, young girl who blinked out at her from the mirror or the fountains waters, seemed a lie.

Penelo was not that girl anymore, and as she had been lucky and well sheltered by those around her during Ashe's quest, she had not any scars to mark the passage her soul had taken or to denote all that she had learned.

Therefore she had decided to mark her flesh in colour and ink, make of herself a work of subtle art, because there was no dark eyed and sharp tongued Archadian in the shadows to make her beautiful anymore.

* * *

_I am a dancer. I have danced in the gutter and I have danced upon the stars. I have danced for want of a partner and I have danced to the beat of a thousand feet. I am a dancer but I am never alone. _

'Vaan, I can't…..it's been too long!'

She tried to slap his hands off her as Vaan pushed and prodded her through the thick crowds of cheering Rabanastrans who thronged the street to mark a whole year since the liberation.

'Sure you can; Penelo it's not like this is something you can forget, and I know you _want_ to.'

Music wound its way through the streets to the beat of a thousand feet and the high singing of flutes and fiddles. A strange bubbling excitement filled her as she rubbed her bare arms and allowed Vaan to sheppard her through the mass of people towards the stage facing the palace.

'Migelo went to a lot of trouble to fix you up with a place in the dance, Pen, and if anyone has a right to dance to victory it's you.'

Vaan physically hoisted her up at the waist and unceremoniously dumped her onto the wooden stage, which was quilted in Galbana stems and a constant fall of rice and confetti from the people waving flags and calling from the open windows of the houses throughout the Royal Plaza.

'But what if I miss a step?'

Vaan shrugged 'Then you fall over. Penelo, we brought down Vayne Solidor, so what are you worrying about a dance for?'

Penelo opened her mouth and then clicked it closed once more. She didn't have an answer to that and as Vaan was swallowed in the pressing crowds, Penelo found herself being pulled up in the line of other dancers. She felt both anxious with nerves and exuberant with joy at the thought of dancing again before a crowd.

As she took her place the trumpets sounded and the (not yet coronated) Queen of Dalmasca stepped out onto her balcony to formerly open proceedings.

Although it seemed unlikely, Penelo felt like Ashe looked straight at her, picking her out of the line-up of blonde and scanty clad Dalmascan girls, as she looked upon the stage. For a moment grey eyes warmed in a smile of greeting and it seemed strange to Penelo that she had not seen or spoken to Ashe in a whole year. Time was always racing on, it seemed, but today at least Penelo would give time a run for its Gil.

The band began to play and Penelo began to dance as above her head streaks of bunting and coloured papers rained down through a faultless cerulean sky.

As she raised her arms to that gorgeous endless sky, it seemed that the rest of the world fell away, and Penelo was not merely one girl in a chorus of dancers, but alone, feet pounding over sun heated wooden boards and the pungent crush of Galbana petals.

When she threw up her arms towards the wisps of scudding clouds drifting over the luminous sky she felt as if she could touch like pulsing, vibrant blue and dip her fingers into the palette of creation. When she stamped her foot, a hundred million feet stamped to her beat, and when she twisted and pivoted and swayed to the winding grace of the music she felt as though she could reach out and still the hands of time.

_Have no fear of me, my dear, I harbour no designs on your virtue; your chastity is a coin I have no wish to spend._

The sounds of thousands of clapping hands became the wing beats of birds raising her to the outer limits and pushing her to the very edge of the stage and she swirled around and around and around, a blur of gold, pink and blue, her feet pricking on the thorns of Galbana lilies and kicking up a whirl of crushed brilliant scarlet petals.

Galbana, rich and thick and heady, perfumed the air as Penelo danced; her limbs stretching and thrusting and arching almost violently as she threw herself into a dance that followed the beating of her own heart.

_Quite the little savage, aren't you my dear?_

Dancing on the very edge, Penelo did not even know that she had broken from formation and that the rest of the dancers, and even the musicians, now caught up in her fervour, sought only to catch the tail of her blazing trail and dance and follow her beat.

She did not see the Queen, high upon her parapet, stamp her own foot and clap her hands to Penelo's dance as old wounds were washed clean and ghosts exorcised to better places with every fluid, dream-like movement.

_Because I am far too fond of you, my dear, to ruin such a friendship._

Colours spun behind Penelo's tightly closed eyelids as she pounded the boards of the stage and twisted like a single blade of grass in a hurricane.

It seemed to those that watched her that Penelo must surely twist and leap straight into the sky, rising on wings of air, as she danced and the people cried and the music stroked the heavens with its joyous fury; the beating of a thousand feet stopping the running of time itself.

Penelo could not turn back the clock and erase all the hurt that had been, neither could she prevent the dawning of tomorrow. Time was not hers to steal away and hold locked up for fear of losing. Yet today, in this one moment of pink and blue and gold and scarlet, she could create a memory that would never fade.

As she came out of one wild pirouette she had the strangest feeling of being caught between to opposing forces as she caught sight of Vaan's beaming face in the crowds as he called himself hoarse screaming her on. Vaan was slick and warm as the sun and bright and bold as light itself but it was the shadows that called to Penelo.

_For we could all be dead on the morrow._

A prickling at the back of her neck almost caused her to shiver as she collapsed, panting, to her knees at the edge of the stage to the thunderous applause of the people of Rabanastre.

Penelo did not give into temptation and turn around as the strange conviction stole over her that, somewhere in the shadows of that quiet darkness that was always watchful even in the brilliant sun, a pair dark hooded eyes watched her and a pen moved with the speed of thought across a pad of pure white paper.

_There now, let the illusion be unspoiled._

She did not turn around because it would not do to catch the thief in the act, and because it would hurt too much to find merely bland shadow at her back.

* * *

_If words are but the accents of action then my performance is merely a memory of all I dream to be. My act is ne'er done and my sleep is rarely peaceful. I am the leading man._

Penelo's string bag of supplies dropped and spilled all over the aerodrome hangar floor as she stared, dumb-founded, at the empty space once filled by the Strahl. She ran over to Vaan in panic; the idea of losing the Strahl monstrous to her.

It was then that something caught her eye. A large square shaped package, barely thicker than two of her fingers together, and perhaps a foot tall and the same again wide. It was affixed to a crystal lamp that struggled to stay aloft against the added weight.

Vaan caught hold of the brown paper wrapped object and pulled it free of the floating lamp. A small velvet pouch fell from the corner of the odd package and dropped to the aerodrome floor alongside a scrawled note as Vaan tore free the paper from what was revealed to be an oak wood picture frame.

'Whoa.'

Vaan breathed as they both freed from the paper, the painted portrait of a girl, caught in the maelstrom of a dance with her arms aloft above her head and face tilted up towards the sky. Swirls of pulsing pink and vibrant blue, picked out with splashes of livid red petals, filled the picture as if the girl, whose hair trailed around her body like a shower of yellow sparks, danced at the very centre of creation.

In the very bottom right hand corner two words had been etched in sharp black paint strikes, contrasting bolding with the riotous colours of the portrait.

_Penelo: Resplendence_

The scrap of paper with the note completed the message of the painting: _I await in Bervenia._

Perhaps it was wishful thinking, perhaps it was pure conceit, but to Penelo it seemed that simple message was written for her and her alone.


	9. Chapter 9

_Those that say parting is the sweetest sorrow are wrong; parting is a gift when reunions bring only disappointment. I liked you better when you were gone. _

Penelo was beginning to think that maybe it was her lot in life to be the girl who doesn't know what is going on, or why it is happening to her, or even, what she is doing slap bang in the middle of things to begin with.

Perhaps it was also her lot in life to be forever losing people too.

She didn't know where she was, Vaan, Filo and Kytes were gone, and she had only Llyud at her side. This was not to say that the Aegyl was bad company but he was not much for conversation and his every utterance verged on the cryptic or morose. To make matters worse Penelo didn't think they were in Lemures anymore; in fact she didn't think they were anywhere that mortals were supposed to tread.

All of this came together to confound Penelo; her heart twisted into knots inside her chest when she so much as tried to contemplate existence without Vaan; it just did not seem conceivable to her that she would be able to go on without the one constant in her life. It had always been she and Vaan and Penelo did not want to live to see the day when it wasn't.

It wasn't so much love as need; without Vaan Penelo would never have left Rabanastre, never have become the person she was now, and she was not sure she would grow into the person she would be tomorrow if tomorrow did not have Vaan within it.

If Vaan was dead, if Kytes and Filo were lost forever too, Penelo would have nothing left to live for...and it would all be _Balthier's_ fault.

As she and Llyud trekked through the strange, glowing, crystalline forest calling out for their missing friends (or Penelo called and Llyud sort of hovered a few feet off the ground, large red wings whipping the still, sterile air into eddies of eldritch light) Penelo could feel a seething anger, akin to betrayal, heat her bloodstream.

From the very first moment they had been reunited with Balthier and Fran in the ruins of Bervenia it was as if they were meeting strangers; Fran was as warm as she knew how, Penelo would concede, but the Viera was not one for public shows of affection and as for Balthier, well, she might as well have been meeting him for the first time, without even being granted the loan of a handkerchief to mark the occasion.

After the Bervenia temple had all but collapsed in on itself and cost Vaan his airship (or not even his airship – there would be all manner of unpleasantness when the true owner of that airship found out the vessel had been crushed under a rockslide) Balthier and Fran had dropped them off in Rabanastre with nary a word and, as they found out later, disappeared off to Lemures.

To think, when she had found out that Balthier had been felled by Shiva when facing the Judge of Wings, Penelo had been afraid for him...only for Balthier to return and turn on them all. He had raised his gun to Vaan, attacked them, and destroyed the Aegyl auralith as if he was no better than any of those other, mercenary, sky pirates.

So caught up in her furious musings, was Penelo, that she tripped on a rock formation and would have fallen flat on her face if Llyud had not reached out an arm to catch her.

Righting her balance and gripping her mage staff tightly in both hands, she tried to banish thoughts of the traitor from her mind. Vaan was her priority. She needed to make sure Kytes and Filo were safe; they were only children and should not have to face this sort of danger.

And yet, and yet, as she traipsed through this strange twilight realm where everything was drenched in dreamlike, oil painting colours, and the air tasted faintly sweet but dry in her mouth, all Penelo could think on was Balthier.

_So many questions and so little listening!_

There had been something so blasé, so gleefully indifferent, about him that the 'leading man' had seemed like a brittle, over-wrought caricature of himself. Never once when he had been patronising Vaan and edging ever closer to the auralith had he looked any of them in the eye.

Penelo remembered thinking, as she watched Fran shake her head and walk away from them to stand with Balthier with visible reluctance that she could scarce believe this was the same man capable of painting such beautiful pictures; would she ever understand him, and why, after all this did she even want too?

The strange vapours of this odd, unsettlingly still place seemed to whisper to her with Balthier's voice as it played with the loose tendrils of her hair that had come free of her twin braids. That inhume and unnatural breeze almost seemed to be mocking her with Balthier's low, melodious, chuckle.

_Did you think you meant anything to me, my dear? Did you think a simpleton like you could ever be anything other than a momentary fancy? I told you, once you interested me no longer, I would be done with you. _

She did not know why, and really it made no sense, but Penelo felt absolutely and completely wretched inside. She wanted to tell herself it was for Vaan, Kytes, and Filo, and the gods only knew she was worried sick for them, but it was also for her, as well.

Her heart hurt for her own pride and she burned with self-recrimination because she had deceived and lied to herself all along. She had believed that she could matter; she had believed that she, simple, uncomplicated Penelo of Low Town, had something of value inside her that would be worth the time of a man like Balthier.

It was only then, as the humid, teasingly soft vapours and glowing dust of this quiet, still, frightening place, stroked over her body like the long, clever fingers of a man who had never cared anything at all for her except for her face (and even then not for long) that she had made the mistake of a half score and a dozen girls before her:

She'd fallen halfway in love with a sky pirate.

* * *

_Don't speak to me in riddles and do not waste breath on verse; I like not your answers so I shall hear them none. _

It was exceedingly odd to be back in Ivalice (or at least floating above it) but it was stranger still to be in the company of Basch (she had complimented him on the beard and new haircut and the man had blushed; she hugged him then and had been gratified to get an awkward pat on the back in return), Ashe, and even dear sweet Larsa again.

So much had happened, but it was as if time had reversed in on itself, so much had happened, and yet here they all were again. The only thing that convinced Penelo that she had not dreamed the last year was the presence of Filo, Kytes, Tomaj and all the Aegyl aboard their airship.

Well perhaps that was not strictly true; they were all here in the flesh but one person, at least, did not seem to be here in spirit.

Penelo found the time to tackle the problem head on (because she did not know how else to do it; she was not a wordsmith, nor gifted with diplomatic guile, and she was too worried to try and affect subtlety) when Vaan was pre-occupied with having a new weapon forged in the saloon and Ashe, Basch, Larsa and some of the friendlier Aegyl, were discussing what to do next.

Not bothering to hide her intentions Penelo left her last culinary failure crackling and melding itself to the blackened frying pan and walked over to Fran. The Viera was even less verbose than she had been a year ago, and Penelo, who tried hard to make friends with the woman twelve months ago, suspected she knew why.

'Fran,'

The Viera turned slowly from her contemplation of the large statue of the Vieran goddess of fertility that, for some reason, stood sentry over the entire saloon area of the airship, to meet Penelo's eyes.

'What's wrong with him, Fran?'

Fran did not much appreciate ambiguity in others, although her own speech was riddled with elusive comments and abstract possibilities, and so Penelo simply asked from the heart that which she thought, no, that which she felt _entitled_ to know.

_I am far too fond of you, my dear, to ruin such a friendship._

He had told her that night in his cabin, when confused and scared, Penelo had been willing, eager perhaps, to throw herself at him and his lust if it meant she did not have to weather the night alone. When she could not, Balthier had guarded her chastity and her virtue – he had been a friend to her - and she could not believe that he could throw all that away in twelve short months.

Fran, to her credit, and perhaps in a strange way as a mark of respect to Penelo, did not feign to misunderstand her. She shrugged one elegant shoulder, reddish eyes cool, remote, but just vaguely troubled.

'If you would know then to him you must address yourself; all I say is but whispers of possibility, no better than lies. He holds the only truth, but doubt I do that he will grant it to you.'

Penelo twisted her hands together before her, feeling underdressed and ill-prepared in her grey sleeveless top and loose flowing red trousers; the out-fit of a dancer, or a silly girl, but she had little else to wear save full armour.

'He painted me; during the anniversary of the liberation. Did you know?'

Fran nodded, those red eyes gazing at her with the level, placid steadiness of the stars in the sky, 'The first and last time he has put pen to paper or brush to canvas since Bahamut fell; hoped I did that he returned to his better spirits, but those hopes crested too soon it seems.'

Penelo frowned. Balthier had not painted at all in the year he and Fran had been missing? Once again Penelo wondered just what had happened to the sky pirates during those months. Looking into Fran's remote and quiet eyes Penelo knew for certain that her only chance of finding out was to face Balthier.

'Where is he?'

Fran's right ear twitched, 'Alone; 'tis the norm. Once he would draw and the solitude would serve purpose. Now his pen is stilled and he wraps himself in solitude to ponder what, I dare not say.' A low sigh escaped Fran, the only outward sign she gave of either concern or disapproval, 'The observation deck is his favoured haunt.'

Without another word Fran rocked smoothly into motion past Penelo and sauntered with the sedate, easy, walk of someone who has seen much and lived long and knew that time was still on her side, out of the saloon.

Penelo untwisted her joined hands, wiped her sweaty palms on her trouser legs, checked to make sure all those who might miss her were either asleep or pre-occupied with other things, and left the saloon.

As she made her way up the steps and out onto the open observation deck, the night air carrying a chill for being so high above the Dalmascan desert. Penelo's heart was skipping in the cradle of her chest. She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed her arms, before realising how weak and foolish this made her seem and forcing herself to walk out onto the deck with head high and back straight.

At first she did not see him. The yellowed moon was both enormous and oddly bulbous and sickly in the clear, cloudless night sky. A million tiny, distant, stars in smudges and half swirls crowded and marred that perfect, thin veil of blackness as Penelo scanned the deck for some sign of the pirate.

A rush of frustrated adrenaline hit her system and left her body in a tiring flush as she realised that Fran must have been wrong, or else Balthier had cannily managed to pass her on his way back into the ship as she was coming out to confront him. She would not put it past him to engineer such a thing, after all, not so long ago he'd made her believe him a traitor when it turned out he'd been right all along.

Feeling just a little relieved that she would not be facing him after all (it was not as if she had any idea of what she would say to him) Penelo walked over to the railings and looked down at the shadow-hewn patchwork of pale lavender and bruised grey dunes and clefts that made up the Giza plains far, far below her.

The slightest scuff of a soft-soled shoe against metal alerted her to the fact that she was not alone after all but she had no time to react before a bored, erudite drawling voice curled like smoke and velvet fur about her chilled shoulders, raising goose-bumps over her exposed flesh.

'Do you mind? You are ruining my view.'

* * *

_There are those who watch and those that do and then there are those who don't and those who won't; I would sooner walk my own path. Do or die, I will decide. _

Penelo took a quick breath before turning about slowly and looking up at the roof of the engine hub where Balthier lounged, as graceful and at ease in such a precarious perch as one of the winged Aegyl would be. He was spot-lit by the jaundiced moonlight, as if the whole night was just a backdrop to his insouciant performance.

With one leg raised and knee bent and the other leg draped over the edge, he had hooked one arm about his drawn up knee and the hand of the other curled about a half-empty bottle of some manner of spirit. When Penelo just continued to stare up at him, Balthier hissed with irritation and waved the hand not holding the bottle at her in the way he might bat away an insect.

'Did you not hear me? I said you are in my way.'

Penelo bridled a little at that treatment, but then narrowed her eyes speculatively, 'I don't see a sketch pad, or a pen. How can I be in your way when you are not doing anything?'

He gave her a look that might have been called black except he did not seem to deem her worthy of the effort such a look would entail. He raised one hand to the side of his head lazily, 'I am composing a painting in my mind's eye; not that I have to explain myself to you.'

That Balthier was, if not drunk, then certainly a good few shades past sober, was not in question and it did not bother Penelo much. It might even give her an advantage; the few times Balthier had allowed himself to drink freely while they all shared company twelve months ago, she had found that he was given to being sweeter tempered and far more generous after a few drinks, than he ever was stone cold sober.

'You do actually, seeing as how you are a guest on Vaan's airship and I'm his partner.' she pointed out boldly, even as her heart tripped wildly in her chest. Balthier quirked one eyebrow at her and then shook his head and reclined back onto his elbows, tilting his head up to the stars.

'Well then, by all means continue to stand there. I would not wish to offend such gracious hosts.'

The playfulness of jesting with Balthier left her oddly cold and something twisted in her stomach, 'But you don't have any trouble in using us.'

She sucked in her a sharp breath as her fists clenched at her side, 'Balthier how could you? How could you raise your gun to Vaan? He admires you so much and that's how you treat him?'

Balthier, almost completely horizontal across the metal roof of the engine hub, sighed, 'And here we go, more bloody complications.'

'Don't you have anything to say; don't you care at all?'

Penelo moved across the observation deck and reached out to hook her fingers on the edge of the engine hub roof. It was not elegant and it was not graceful but using the honed strength in her upper arms and kicking with her legs Penelo began to haul herself up onto the roof beside him.

Two strong hands grasped her around the elbows as she wriggled and struggled to pull herself up. 'What are you doing, my girl? You'll slice yourself all to bloody ribbons if you are not careful.'

With Balthier's help Penelo found herself solidly on the hub roof with his arms around her. For a moment the feel of cotton against her bare arms and the heat of his long-fingered hand splayed across her back brought back delicious tactile memory of the last time she had been alone with him, and then she regained her senses and roughly shook his hands off her.

'Hmm, my keen deductive reasoning suggests you are upset with me.'

Balthier murmured lips twitching in a smirk as he shifted on the hub roof so that he could face her but also so that no part of his body made contact with hers. He rested the unlabelled bottle on his drawn up knee and watched her with shrewd amusement.

'I _am_ angry,' she snapped holding her arms tightly across her chest as the chill starlight shivered over her skin, 'Vaan believed in you. He believed in the _'leading man' _and you deliberately let him think you had turned bad. How can you be so unfeeling?'

Balthier's heavy-lidded eyes regarded her from a lofty cynical distance, 'Vaan should learn not to put his faith in false idols; I did the boy a favour. A man who puts his faith in his fellow man is worse than a fool. In fact he is nothing better than a tool.'

Penelo could feel her teeth grinding together and she raised her fist to her mouth to keep her furious words tightly locked away behind her lips. She almost itched to punch him in the nose.

'You're right,' the words forced their way through her clenched teeth, 'Vaan is a better leading man than you ever were.'

She wanted to hurt him because she was tired of giving him the opportunity to hurt her. She wriggled her way to the edge of the hub roof ledge intending to drop down and return to the warmth and friendly company within the ship. There was little for her out here, evidently.

Before she could jump down Balthier's hand curled and fastened about her forearm, 'Sticks and stones, my dear, I wonder when you are going to have the courage to stand by your own convictions and not hide behind your precious Vaan, hmm?'

She turned to him sharply, 'Let go.'

A lazy smile quirked his lips and he abruptly jerked her off balance towards him via the grip he had on her forearm. As Penelo tried to push away from the radiating body heat she could feel within the circle of his arms, Balthier began to briskly rub his hands over her chilled forearms.

'You Rabanastrans seem to make a habit of dressing in inappropriate attire for the environment, don't you? Or perhaps you simply want to experience the novelty of contracting hypothermia in the desert?'

Penelo did not say a word; she simply could not. The feel of Balthier's hands on her bare limbs was not a sensuous touch, nor romantic. Instead it was brisk, practical, and the friction of his palms against her arms brought warmth and feeling back to her cold skin in tingling waves.

'My, my you are sprung taut, aren't you? Whatever could the matter be, hmm?'

Penelo still said nothing, the mocking melody of Balthier's words rolling about her head like thick, sweet nectar as under the efficient brush of his hands Penelo began to feel like a flower being coaxed into open bloom. Or perhaps some manner of ripened fruit hanging on a vine; she felt swollen and full under her skin and fit to burst. It was hard to remember she was angry with him when all she wanted to do was press her head against his shoulder and lean into the warmth she could feel raising from his body.

'Why didn't you just tell us about the Anima and the auralith; why didn't you trust us to help you, Balthier?'

She finally managed to formulate the question as her skin became warm and soft and almost painfully sensitive under the run of his hands, which had become less brisk and slowed into something more like a rhythmic caress.

Balthier did not immediately answer with words but instead positioned her body so that she had her back to him and sat within the cradle of his legs, almost, as he began to stroke his warm hands over shoulders and upper back.

'Firstly, I trust no one save Fran, and secondly, explanations take too long and engender far too many inconvenient questions. It was more expedient to simply send you to the Yahri and let you work it out yourselves. Of course, considering how long you were gone, it might have been faster to simply sit you down and draw you all a diagram.'

Penelo felt a little like a couerl under the sun as her flesh flexed under the run of his hands; she wanted to stretch out and start purring and had to bite her tongue to stop herself from doing so. Penelo could feel her eyes fluttering shut as she leaned her weight back against Balthier's strong hands.

'That doesn't explain anything,' she roused herself before she lost all self-respect and curled up and fell asleep against that leather-vested chest.

'That's just an excuse. It doesn't explain why you're letting Vaan take the lead. You even called _him_ leading man and made sure that Ashe and Basch talk to him when they'd more naturally talk to you. If you thought he was too dumb to understand what was going on, why let him be the leader?'

She really had to remember that she couldn't trust Balthier as far as she could throw him; just because he was being sweet now did not mean he wouldn't be an absolute swine when the sun rose tomorrow. She could not afford to be distracted and she was not so naïve that she didn't realise that that was what he was trying to do.

Balthier abruptly grasped her around the waist and tugged her backward the last inch and half or so, so that she ended up with her back against his chest and her legs fenced in by his much longer ones. Her cheeks blazed with raw, volcanic heat as certain parts of her anatomy came into contact with certain parts of his and she realised that she was essentially trapped and encircled by Balthier's body.

He chuckled and pushed her forward a little (manipulating her with the ease of one pushing and prodding a rag-doll) so he could begin to work out the kinks caused by long combat and worry that had knotted the muscles of her shoulders and the back of her neck.

'Some might say I am ensuring my reputation remains unblemished by allowing Vaan to take central role in this debacle. The leading man in any drama is ultimately responsible for the out-come; I don't foresee a happy ending therefore shall let Vaan take the rap.'

'Hummmm?'

Penelo flushed even further when she realised that not only had she barely heard a word Balthier had just said but that she had also forgotten the question and the purpose of their conversation.

Balthier chuckled again and the sound rumbled through his chest and rippled through her; Penelo had the near overwhelming urge to wriggle in his arms and tensed up to maintain some semblance of self-control.

'Tsk-tsk, no sooner do I have you loosened up, my girl, then you clam up again. You'll be dead before you reach twenty if you do not allow yourself to relax.'

Penelo was fighting a battle with her brain, her body, and the strange tingling, twanging feeling in her abdomen. Her brain was trying to wad through a swamp of soft, warm, languid pleasure and hold onto her questions and suspicions while her body wanted to melt like candle wax and dribble to the floor in a happy puddle, and the liquid heat in her abdomen throbbed persistently with an entirely different kind of want.

'Balthier?' Penelo bowed her spine, the crown of her head touching his shoulder as she tried to pull away from him but ended up simply filling his arms all the more.

'Hmm?'

His breath tickled her ear and his hands slipped from the relatively innocuous flesh of her shoulders to her waist where his fingers fanned over the exposed skin of her mid-rift between her bustier top and her hip-hugging trousers. Somewhere and somehow the purpose and intent of this conversation had escaped the both of them.

'Balthier…..what's happened to you?' she bit her lip as his hands curved over her belly and one finger skirted the edge of her navel making things low in her stomach twang like loose elastic.

Penelo was not sure if she rose up on her knees to escape him or to offer up more of her body – blood was pounding in her ears and she felt light headed as if she had been sipping from Balthier's forgotten bottle of boot-leg spirit all night long.

Balthier let his hands smooth up her sides, a caress that had just an edge of fierceness to it as he brushed over her rib cage and his fingertips threatened to dive up and under the edge of her top. He pressed his lips to the back of her neck, 'I think the more pressing matter is not what _has_ happened, but what is happening _now _and what, if anything, we should do about it.'

Penelo went still under his hands and suddenly she became aware of the chill moonlit night air once more. It hit her hot, flushed, face like a cold slap and she sucked in a sharp breath. Balthier's hands grew still and they both seemed to hold themselves very, very quiet for a moment.

'Balthier?'

She was suddenly almost afraid as she felt him shifting back from her and the absence of his heat left her cold and exposed to the elements. In fact she suddenly felt like a hot house flower abandoned in the frozen wastes of Paramina. Frost and loneliness would wither her to mush and pulp in seconds she was sure. Every particle of skin on her body ached to feel his hands on her again.

She tried to shift around to face him, turning from the leering face of the moon almost helplessly.

'No,' Balthier's sharpness stopped her in her tracks. 'Stay facing that way. I think it will be safer all round.'

He sighed and she could almost imagine his eyelids falling down to mask his eyes and guard his expression; she could feel him pulling away from her. She thought she heard him mutter something along the lines of: 'Bloody marvellous, this would be so much simpler were I sober.'

'What do you mean safer?' she whispered not feeling remotely safe kneeing before the yellow, ancient moon with him at her back, so near and yet retreating so very fast.

His sigh slithered over her like a cloak of black silk, 'Penelo this cannot go on.'

Tears prickled her eyelids and she shook her head hard enough to make her braids lash against her shoulders, 'I don't understand.'

He scoffed derisively, 'Now, now, my girl, let's not be coquettish, you know what I am talking about and I think you know precisely what I mean; you are in love with your stalwart brave childhood sweetheart but you cavort with me. Can you not see the conflict here?'

'Vaan?'

The name conjured the face and Vaan's lazy, vaguely vacuous grin and bright open expression jarred in her mind. Vaan did not belong in this crisp, cool night high above the ground under the all-knowing moonlight and the velvet shadows. He was a creature of light and simplicity and belonged to the sunlight and the days of adventure. She could not understand why Balthier would speak of him now.

'Hmm, well done, my dear, you remember his name. Now, tell me how do you suppose he would react if he had seen the two of us but moments ago?'

Penelo whipped her head around to stare at Balthier with wide eyes and sharp in-drawn breath. He smiled at her crookedly. Her heart twisted painfully as her stomach roiled with acidic guilt.

'Hm, yes, the Gil drops at last.' Balthier rose to his feet and swept an arm downward to catch up his bottle before he dropped easily down off the roof of the hub without spilling a drop of his liquor.

'Adultery is a fine pastime, Darling, and I can well appreciate your frustrations; your chosen beloved has yet to experience puberty it seems, but I warn you, I'll not be tagged with the blame when you realise a little slap and tickle is not worth the heartache.'

* * *

_I have never feared the liars and the cheats, I understand their rules and know their fears; it is the truth and its vagaries that leave me cold. _

Penelo rose shakily to her feet. She did not know how to feel; relief, sick alarm, and crushing disappointment, warred with the throbbing, burning ache in her abdomen as she watched him move towards the door to the airship's interior.

'A little slap and tickle…..that's all this was?'

Balthier turned back to her and opened his arms from his body giving her an ironic bow, 'Indeed. You should thank me for my restraint, dearest, my appetites run to more adult stimulations and I do not like to be persistently denied that final satisfaction. I won't play these adolescent games a moment longer.'

Penelo could only stare at him as her cheeks drenched in heated blood and shame. Her hands clenched even as her nervous system still tingled with the memory of _his_ _hands_ on her. 'W-who said I'm playing?'

The words were out before she could do a thing about it but as soon as they sounded on the air she found that she did not mind so terribly much. Balthier watched her calmly from the silver edged shadows.

'Of course you are playing. These trysts are always a game. You gamble pleasure against fidelity and hope that the former is worth the risk; or so I have heard. In truth I've never been the one on your side of the equation.'

Penelo swallowed dryly as Balthier's sharp, closed lipped and sly little smile sliced at her conscience. Balthier had called _this, _whatever it was that existed between she and he, adultery, but Penelo was not sure he was right.

She loved Vaan, dearly and completely, but she did not belong to him, and as Balthier had rather cruelly alluded to, Vaan did not seem remotely interested in romance……not that she was completely sure that Balthier was offering her that either. In fact she had a feeling what he was, maybe, possibly, offering her would last only one night and be over and done with come the sunrise.

Still, if Balthier's reputation was truly deserved, it would be a night to remember.

'Hmm, nothing to say sweetheart?' he purred rubbing one thumb over the lip of the bottle.

Penelo's eyes gravitated to that movement as he trailed the pad of his thumb over the mouth of the bottle again and again and watched her with those cynical sly eyes from the shadows and grey areas that were so much his home.

The silence held time in check for a count of five heavy heartbeats as Penelo simply stared and Balthier waited, insouciant and indifferent. Was it really just a game to him? A gamble of pleasure versus complication. Did he care a whit if Vaan was hurt or did he only care that he might be blamed for all this?

Penelo stood in the circle of the ivory moon and shivered, arms coming up to rub at her arms as he watched her with veiled and obscure eyes. She could almost feel those eyes ticking over every curve she possessed; he knew them all so well from sketch and touch. She felt naked under those cool, ironic eyes.

After an agonising moment, wherein, if Balthier had spoken or reached for her she would have gone to him, he chuckled blandly.

'Hmm, as I thought; nothing but a little tease.'

He turned on his heel and opened the door leading down to the interior stairs and into the airship. Before he took the first step he turned around once more and raised the bottle up to her in mocking salute,

'By the way, my dear, those tattoos are quite delectable. Wherever did you come by that design?'

Without waiting for her to stutter a reply he jauntily descended the stairs and the hatch door banged closed behind him. Penelo dropped to her knees on the engine hub roof like a marionette with strings cut and shuddered to hold in her tears.

_Nothing but a little tease_……..but why did she think that he'd lied to her with every honeyed breath; why was it that she thought that it was not contempt but _fear_ that had caused him to once more back away from her?

Penelo found herself wondering, as she looked up at the large and smugly amused yellow moon, was the famous philanderer afraid of the conquest? Did Balthier have more to lose from this 'tryst' than she did, and if so, what?


	10. Chapter 10

_We are born with nothing but our need and as we grow, despite all that we learn, we remain merely mewling infants at heart; we want, we need, we hunger and we die. One wonders what the point is. _

Balthier did not like sleep. In and of itself this was hardly revelatory. In fact the casual observer might question why such information was even worth the telling. Balthier would be happy to let the matter lie at that. Introspection was also hardly a favoured pastime of his.

Nor was insomnia; alas he didn't get much choice in that.

It was the dreams, you see, or rather one dream, over and over again that festered under his closed eyelids and burrowed into his brain so that he looked for a crux at the bottom of the bottle when forty hours straight without so much as a wink of sleep left the leading man resembling something of a neurotic zombie.

Fran had 'suggested', more than once, with raised eyebrow and slightly pursed lips when she finally despaired of his dazed and sunken eyes, and his tendency to forget what he was trying to say somewhere mid-sentence at the highpoint of his insomnia, that he might wish to seek the aid of some manner of physician.

It was usually at this point that, surviving on some form of hereditary masochistic lunacy and sheer bloody-mindedness, he hit upon the notion of doing something unspeakably insane, for example, trying to safely pilot a burning, malfunctioning sky fortress on a collision course with a desert city he had just wasted nine months of his life trying to liberate (though for the life of him he still doesn't know why: he loathes the bloody place).

Sometimes, on the moments when he is not maintaining his wits over a chasm of petty neurosis and just barely controlled bad habits (Fran berated him, albeit in dry ironic tone, that the drink would pickle him alive. He usually smirked and replied that death by the bottle was still preferable to death by the noose), Balthier wondered if it was worth the effort he expended, this elaborate performance of the leading man.

Then again, considering the success he's enjoyed while battling his various hidden neurosis, he could probably take over all Ivalice with one afternoons work after a few nights decent rest.

No matter, back to the dream, that bloody dream. He might feel more at ease with himself if he could claim it was a particularly harrowing and traumatic nightmare woven from the very threads of despair itself; that would be suitably dramatic for the leading man.

Dreaming of being awake was neither dramatic, harrowing, or even bloody _sensible_ and thus Balthier was not only trapped by a dream of consciousness that never let him rest and a mind that remained active even in the depths of his sub-conscious, grinding the gist of life's experiences to powder when he really, really wanted to be thinking of nothing, but he was _embarrassed_ by the fact.

It was monstrous and exhausting to the soul to never, ever, be able to escape into the sweet oblivion of nothingness. He was always thinking, even when he could not remember what about and his body was always drawn taut and ready even when his muscles ached and throbbed with a need to relax, to let go and rest.

As his eyelids flickered closed and his eyes darted about inside his skull, when his body feigned the lie of slumber, his mind saw itself as awake, relieving yesterday or formulating tomorrow's plans. Balthier hated it and so he was always, always, tired.

Of course he'd die before conceding weakness to his audience; only Fran knew what a pitiable mess the man behind the brocade vest and crisp white shirt truly was, and she had, for reasons best known to herself (and sometimes he thought her madder even than he was), decided to make it her task to help him keep the pieces of his façade together and the performance of the leading man alive.

Recent history had not made Balthier's ill-fated life any easier. Oh, the mess with the Princess and the Bahamut was a lark, and allowed him to settle a few long standing scores (and no one managed a good nights sleep in all the months they travelled together –so his long experience of surviving sleep deprivation proved advantageous to him) but afterward the fates had had their jests with him again.

He still did not know what that false Glabados trinket was, that had, according the Fran, conspired to make him disappear for a handful of hours. To Balthier, however, it had been months. Months in a time not his own where the future was not the bright place of Hume advancement he might have hoped. Instead he had travelled, through magick or merely the tricks of the mind, to a strange and distantly familiar place where Humes still fought the same old wars, but with different names, and everything that he himself had once bled and battled for was long forgotten or rendered obsolete.

In that place that might never be, and might well be tomorrow's offspring, they did not even fly airships anymore; all in all dream, delusion, or ghost of reality yet to come, the whole experience had been very much a kick in the teeth to Balthier.

Thus, back in his own time and place, he was now carrying on his back the weight of near constant insomnia and the memories of a future that might be only a figment of rampaging psychosis…….

…….oh, and bloody _Penelo_ wouldn't leave him alone!

Thus when he finally broke down and asked Fran to mix him the concoction of Hi-potion, remedy, Bacchus Wine (yes, that addition had surprised him too) and a pinch of sleeping weed, which in full dose could fell a Behemoth from twenty paces away, because he was utterly exhausted and bored of feeling punch drunk all the time, he had anticipated a peaceful night of sipping Fran's dangerous insomnia cure and watching the moon wax and wane on the observation deck of Vaan's airship.

He had not expected to be disturbed by another living soul. Honestly, he should have bloody known better and escaping from Penelo with his wits intact and his libido chained behind an effort of will that left even more exhausted than he began, Balthier had retreated, with all expected dignity and suave assurance, to his cabin and locked the door firmly behind him.

It should have been enough. In a fair world it would have been, but for too long Balthier had been the gods' plaything and the joke, it seemed, was once again on him.

* * *

_Sleep is the universal equaliser; we are all as one in slumbers embrace. A pity it is that we cannot share each others dreams, then perhaps, there would be no war, no hate, and no need to deceive._

Penelo was not sure what had possessed her to do this; it made no sense and was a gross invasion of privacy. Still, even as all these objections went through her own head, crouched as she was before the locked door of the cabin Balthier had declared his for the duration of his stay, it did not stop Penelo was twisting the pick in the lock.

It was a little known family shame that Penelo's second eldest brother had been something of a professional thief and scally-wag before he was strung up by the Imperial soldiers, a month into the occupation, for daring to steal from an Archadian supply store. For very good reasons Penelo had never told anyone, especially Vaan, that Annikil had taught her how to pick locks.

Thus it was seconds later that Penelo breached the threshold of the cabin doorway and tentatively, silently, shut the door behind her. The room was in darkness and the only sound was the deep, rhythmic rise and fall of Balthier's breathing.

Penelo stood in the centre of that dark room, unable to see anything except the spots of grey and white and black that made up the thick wall of darkness before her. She took a moment as she acclimatised to her new surroundings to work on controlling her own breathing and the tripping of her heart in her chest.

Over and over again one question kept rolling back and forth in her mind like a single Gil coin in an otherwise empty purse: what was she doing here, in Balthier's room, in the middle of the night?

Another voice in her head, not very like Penelo at all, for it was both snide and disdaining, pointed out to her in withering disparagement that there was only _one_ reason a girl would sneak into a renowned womaniser's cabin in the silence of the night.

Slowly the dancing dots of shadow began to converge and coalesce into recognisable shapes, dim and ill-defined in the heavy, warm blackness that closed in on Penelo pungent with the unfamiliar scents of an intimacy she had not been invited to share.

Narrowing her eyes she could pick out a collection of hooks on the wall where Balthier had hung his Arcturus rifle within arms reach of the bed. She also saw the pale grey ghost of his white shirt, dulled by the lack of light but still brighter than almost anything else in the room, hanging from another hook.

The cabin had the vestiges of the scent she had come to associate with Balthier; gun smoke, ink, and the comfortable tang of leather, as well as something sweet and heady, not cologne or perfume, but an aroma that was familiar, and seemed almost edible, that rose from his skin.

Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to put it off any longer Penelo let her gaze fall upon the form wrapped up in the bed sheets lying on the bed. She bit the inside of her lip hard as her eyes feasted with voyeuristic glee.

_He plays with you still, does he? _Fran had said when she found Penelo still fighting tears on the roof top of the airship some fifteen minutes after Balthier's departure, _Or perhaps he acts in your interests? Perhaps he fights his own nature for the betterment of yours?_

Penelo, unsure what to make of that enigmatic statement, simply wiped her nose on her arm and told Fran the truth, or at least that fraction of the truth that made sense to her, _I just want to be his friend, Fran. I don't know why he keeps….._she had hesitated cheeks pinking despite the cold as she thought about exactly what Balthier kept doing to her and then stopping abruptly most cruelly, just when she felt ready to melt with pleasure.

The look in Fran's ageless eyes said she was well aware of what was happening, and probably understood it better than Penelo herself. Still the Viera had more tact than to address it directly and instead to a more circuitous route around the issue.

_His sleep is oft times troubled; his mind always roving never resting. On occasion when his agitation too much becomes, he drinks of a draught I give him. If you would pursue where even he wards you off, then tonight with sleep heavy on him, you might gain what you believe you want. _

Before Penelo could formulate and verbalise the first question, of which she had many, Fran had turned to leave but paused after a step or two and fixed Penelo with keen, inhume eyes that held a faint, dry humour, _And I had thought the most danger lay with the Princess, but it is the pauper that troubles the appetites and conscience of the pirate, after all. _

Then Fran had departed and her inexplicable words, part warning, part acceptance, and part censure, died on the chill night breeze. Penelo, alone once more with much to think on, found herself wondering what was it that she really wanted from Balthier: friendship, honesty, or merely a delivery on the promise in those bedroom eyes?

Flushing at the audacity of her thoughts and the memory of her strange conversation with Fran, Penelo blinked her eyes in the present and looked down on the vulnerable, sleeping, pirate before her.

He was laying face first against the white pillows, one hand shoved under the three thick mound of down filled pillows and the other reaching up over his head as if he had just tackled the pillows and was still in the process of restraining them.

It came as a shock to Penelo to realise that this was the first time she had ever seen his bared arms.

Even during their trek through the wide open spaces of Ivalice, when they had all camped under the stars, Balthier was always one of the last to bed down and the first to rise and she had never seen him in any state of dress except buttoned and fastened from ankle to neck.

Almost without consciously deciding to do so she had breached the confines of the room and now hovered above him as he slept.

Her right hand moved of its own accord and hovered, like a white ghost, over the small expanse of his strong shoulders and back that was revealed before the blankets swallowed him up. It was not chill in this cabin and Penelo wondered why he had so many blankets pulled up to mid chest.

Even as she was pondering why a man who was so extravagant in most things should be so shy of his body, and her hand hovered an inch above that warm flesh, Balthier seemed to hiss between his teeth in annoyance and rolled over abruptly.

Penelo gulping in shock, jumped back, snatching her hands to her, and clasped them together tightly, as she almost crashed into the far wall of the not very large cabin in her haste to get away.

Gods, please don't let him wake and find her here!

The gods must have been smiling on her, or perhaps merely frowning on Balthier, because although he rolled over onto his back with a half-formed murmur of complaint, fidgeted for a moment, and flung one arm up over his head across the pillow, he did not waken.

After counting out a handful of heartbeats and waiting for his breathing to even out once more, Penelo crept closer again.

She still didn't know what she hoped to achieve by invading Balthier's privacy like this and watching him sleep (though that was strangely fascinating – it had seemed on their journey a year ago as if the pirate had somehow learned how to survive without needing to rest).

Still, as she tip-toed over to him once more and could now see his face without its habitual cynical mask, she found herself thinking that he looked tired, which was funny as he was sleeping while she thought it but also that he looked……unhappy.

Almost immediately Penelo tried to reject the notion. He was a sky pirate, a man who a queen and an emperor owed a favour too, and all Ivalice was quite literally his for the taking. Still, for all that, Penelo found that she could not really pin-point a time he had ever seemed truly happy to her except, maybe, when he had stood before his easel and teased her while she curled upon the windowsill of her borrowed room in Reddas' manse, caught in a gorgeous apoplexy of acute embarrassment and pleasure, to be his chosen model.

Balthier moved again, brow creasing in a familiar scowl as he shifted on his side as if to face her and snatched roughly at his pillow with questing fingers. His wide expressive mouth, usually tightly under his control and contorted into a mocking smirk, was now soft and relaxed and his full bottom lip formed an entirely unintentional pout that, to Penelo, made him look utterly adorable, and akin to a sulky sleeping child.

Smiling to herself for no discernable reason Penelo's fingers reached out and she brushed just her fingertips over the veldt of soft brown hair cover his forearm.

His arms were corded with muscle as she might expect from a man who made a habit of hefting a three foot long rifle in one hand and could pick up Vaan and run with him over his shoulder as if her friend weighed no more than a sack of flour (Vaan was still easily embarrassed by that event, which, although she had not witnessed it in person, Penelo still delighted in hearing about).

Feeling strangely emboldened by Balthier's obliviousness, and also considering it just revenge for earlier that night when he had touched her conscious body with much more wanton ease than she dared do to him even while he knew nothing of it, Penelo let her fingers walk up his forearm from wrist to shoulder.

His skin was as pale and fine-grained as she had imagined from someone who wore a leather vest and full sleeves in all weathers, and there was something deliciously empowering about being able to play her fingertips over his body while he was so pliable, peaceful, and still, underneath her hands.

She found herself wondering what it would feel like to be in the circle of those arms, drifting to sleep with her cheek against his heartbeat and as her stomach performed dangerous acrobatic tricks inside her at the notion, Penelo found Fran's voice haunting her thoughts once more.

_Tonight with sleep heavy on him, you might gain what you believe you want. _

Balthier's breathing did not alter in its steady, deep pace, and the almost violent flicker of his closed eyelids and the bunching of his brows had nothing at all to do with her, she was sure, as her hand ghosted down his flank which tapered down into a narrow waist. His skin was delectably warm and pliant as Penelo let her fingers climb back up from his waist to his shoulder.

Curiosity over took her completely when Penelo's fingers brushed the first of a number of cross-hatching, dribbling, broken lines of scar tissue that petered down his shoulders and covered his back in a latticework of thin, vicious marring wounds.

Penelo, a healer of some skill, knew something of injuries and found her mood dipping from excited mischief to a certain trepidation when she realised that not only were these scars all the result of a multi-braided whip, but that there were layers upon layers of whip scars covering more whip scars from multiple, separate, lashes.

The healer in her overtook the voyeur, though in truth a casual observer may not have noticed the difference initially, as Penelo rolled Balthier onto his stomach and pulled down the blankets to his hips so she could see if the scars really crawled all the way down his back.

They did, and Penelo bit the inside of her lip in sympathy for the pain these old wounds must have caused him when fresh, especially as no one had been there to heal them and stop the scars forming in the first place.

It was ironic therefore that Balthier chose that very moment to emerge from the depths of deep sleep.

That very moment when Penelo was least ready to face him (not that she ever was ready to brave that rapier wit – despite her boldness in breaking into his cabin while he slept) or defend her presence in his room, caught leaning over him while he slept deeply and completely unaware of her presence.

Had she been a different sort of person, or been more quick witted, she might have hit him with a Sleep incantation right then and saved herself the mortification of an explanation.

As it happened, not having either the wits or the cowardice to do that, Balthier swam up from drugged sleep with Penelo's breath tickling the nape of his neck and her hands, faintly glowing with a healing light summoned by sympathy alone, spread across his bare back; he stirred and his eyelids struggled to open half-mast.

Heart going into painful palpitations in the flimsy cage of her ribcage Penelo was trapped between the paradoxical and nonsensical desire to either burst into tears or collapse into giggles as Balthier blinked owlishly at her and cleared his throat before murmuring in a voice thick and languid with sleep.

'Can I help you with something, darling?'


	11. Chapter 11

_If we were our lies and our conceits, if we were our rules and our restraint, perhaps better men we would make; alas in the darkness of the night we are all the same. _

Balthier swam up from the peaceful depths of sleep already feeling refreshed and lazily comfortable; a certain sense of sated satisfaction warmed the deepest corners of his mind as he stretched his spine and raised a somnambulant hand to his face to scrape the limp hair from his brow, blinking his eyes open.

Thirty seconds that was how long his comfort lasted, as rising into full alertness, Balthier became aware of a heavy restricting weight inhibiting the movement of his right arm and pinning it to the bed. Rather swiftly on the heels of this realisation came the revelation that he was not alone in his bed.

Reacting to his own movements the interloper in his bed sighed sleepily, rolled over across his numbed right arm and, mumbling something incoherent and incomprehensible, wrapped her arms about his neck and bowed her spine as she pressed along the length of his body with all the wanton ease of a professional temptress.

Panic exploded throughout the lobes of Balthier's brain as Penelo, sinuous as a serpent, wound her limbs about him and, smiling with an appallingly out of place drowsy innocence, trailed one hand down his chest to his stomach causing him to clench the muscles of his abdomen against the first stirrings of desire that unconscious touch inspired.

What, how, when…..and why don't I remember? Those were the questions that jostled, screaming, for pride of place in his mind as Balthier froze in total confusion and desperately raided the treasure troves of his memory for an explanation.

He remembered going to bed alone; he was adamant of this fact. He most certainly did not invite a winsome, but undoubtedly odd, Rabanastran orphan to share his bed for the night.

So how was it that he awoke (and his body clock, attuned to the rising sun as keenly as a Rooster, knew it to be just past dawn, even though his cabin had no window) to find said oddly alluring, but undoubtedly more trouble than she was worth, Rabanastran warm and sweetly dishevelled in his arms?

Something had clearly gone quite wrong somewhere and Balthier would be damned thrice if he was blamed for this. He'd been asleep, very, very asleep thanks to Fran's powerful sleeping aid. If anything had happened he'd remember, surely? Wouldn't he?

Panic was not something Balthier indulged in over much, he was both too cynically self-assured, or too sleep-deprived usually, to drum-up the energy needed for such a feat but this occasion was proving the exception to the rule.

Penelo, oblivious of the difficulties she was causing Balthier, but sensing that her warm Hume blanket had grown rigid and unresponsive, sighed and nuzzled her cheek under his collarbone as she continued to mumble incomprehensible drivel and petted his chest with sleep walking hands.

The urge to shove her forcibly out of his bed right that instant was almost overwhelming; maybe if he ran really, really fast he could escape the inevitable fall-out of this unmitigated disaster? Or maybe he should just take a flying leap off the airship roof and cut his losses instead?

What had happened last night?

It dawned on him (and yes, he was slow today) that Penelo was fully clothed, or at least as fully clothed as she had been the last time he had seen her while conscious. The rather fetching ensemble of pale grey sleeveless bustier and loose flowing scarlet trousers, which hung deliciously low on her prettily rounded hips, was still in place albeit somewhat the worse for wear for having been slept in. This was some small reassurance to Balthier as it seemed rather odd indeed that Penelo would have dressed fully in her clothes after sex.

Sex, hmmm……..

Still suffering from a complete amnesia regarding how he came to find Penelo in his bed, where presumably she had weathered the night with him, he was nevertheless much heartened to realise that not only was she fully clothed but he still wore the comfortable cotton trousers that formed his usual sleep attire.

So, no sex then, but still this situation he had awoken too was excessively muddled.

Balthier was no fool when it came to affairs of a carnal nature; for that very reason his affairs were kept short and sweet. Hearts were never engaged, intimacy was restricted to the entirely physical variety and he usually scarpered from a lady's chambers long before the break of dawn.

Therefore waking up with a woman (and he supposed, considering the discomfiture Penelo was causing him below his waistband just by curling against him in sleep, she had earned the title of woman and not girl) that he not only knew rather well, but had also spoken with at length and who he might, if forced to it, consider, if not a friend, then a semi-trusted adherent, was a worry to him.

At the age of sixteen he who became Balthier made a promise. He would never trust anyone ever again and he would never, ever, allow anyone he cared for the opportunity to hurt him again.

In the intervening years Balthier had amended this promise to exclude the presence of trusted and beloved Viera partners (because even he needed to depend on someone from time to time) and had, in compensation, made damned sure he was never so foolish as to engage his affections in either friendship or romance.

Friends could become enemies, family could become megalomaniacal mass-murderers and lovers could become liabilities and hindrances; thus he would do away with the bother and have none.

Penelo shifted once more, a slight frown ghosting over her pretty, simple milkmaids face with its uncomplicated emotion always on display, and that soft, rosebud mouth that he had already spent far too much time pondering.

He had told himself it was purely the aesthetic in him admiring a little piece of hume perfection, but then he had gone and kissed that little trembling mouth during the last night of their stay in Balfonheim and it became hard for even a practiced self-deceiver like Balthier, to continue to claim that his interest was purely artistic.

The brutal truth of it was, if he did not know her, did not know something of the sum and substance of the thoughts that filled her head, he would have had her by now; perhaps more than once if she proved able to deliver on the promise of that supple, ridiculously nubile, dancers physique.

Penelo sighed once more, sounding unutterably content in her dreams and hitched one leg up over his, almost to his waist, as she cleaved against him and snuggled her brow into the crook between his neck and shoulder; her soft little mouth shaping half-formed words against his sensitive skin reminiscent of kisses.

Sometimes Balthier truly wondered what precisely he had done, and to whom, to warrant this level of complication in his life. It just wasn't bloody fair!

Now would be the perfect time to wake her, or at the very least, disengage her limbs from him – sweets gods what was she intending to _do_ climb his body? – before the gentle pressure of her leg sliding over his hip and her right hand gliding down his left flank broke the very last of his reserve all together.

Her sleep dancing fingers passed the boundary of his waistband and any hopes of maintaining _any_ control of this spiralling downward situation fled along with the last vestiges of his restraint; his arms came round her, left hand cupping the back of her head as his right hand, attached to the arm still pinned under her body, slipped over her pettable rump as he pressed her more firmly against his body and woke the drowsily amorous girl with a surprisingly hungry kiss.

Damn…….but he had really _tried_ to be a gentleman.

* * *

_I talk to the moon and the darkest night. I confess my heart to the indifferent stars; in the hours of the shadows I am truthful. The sun alone owns all my lies. _

Heart going into painful palpitations in the flimsy cage of her chest Penelo was trapped between the paradoxical and nonsensical desire to either burst into tears or collapse into giggles as Balthier blinked owlishly at her and cleared his throat before murmuring in a voice thick and languid with sleep.

'Can I help you with something, darling?'

Words flew to her lips and escaped without first seeking permission from her brain, which was floundering in guilty panic, 'Where did you get those scars on your back? Who whipped you?'

Of all the things she might have thought to say, she had not expected to ask that question, but still, under the circumstances she realised that nothing else she could say would be any more sensible.

Balthier, more asleep than awake and eyelids drooping even more heavily than usual, shifted a little and raised one hand drowsily to his brow. She thought he might drift off again without answering and let her escape relatively unscathed.

'Hmm, the life of an apprentice sky pirate is not all airships and auraliths; Vaan has no idea how lucky he is. I'm a saint in pirate circles.'

It seemed to be taking Balthier some effort to formulate speech and his words were slightly slurred and rolled in the close, warm, air of his darkened cabin thickly, like honey and molasses.

'Pirates did that to you?'

Penelo was shocked both at the notion that sky pirates would do such a thing to one another (her only experience of them was mixed it was true; Rikken, Elza and Raz, as well as Balthier and Fran, were the best of the profession she supposed) but also that Balthier would have submitted to such a thing.

She was just readying herself to ask him who had hurt him and why, when Balthier roused himself enough to properly open his eyes, 'Why are you here?'

Penelo's questions lodged in her throat; she had dreaded this moment because for the life of her she did not have an answer and had somewhat hoped Balthier would be too drugged and lethargic to ask it of her.

'I wanted to talk to you.'

She finally stuttered out, feebly, and waited for the wave of suave disdain from him to drown out her pathetic utterance at any moment. Balthier laboriously rolled onto his back rising on his elbows to flex his spine as the bedding pooled about his waist and Penelo had a lovely view of his lean torso stretching before she awkwardly averted her eyes.

Her pulse was pounding so loudly in her ears she barely heard him speak. 'What do want to talk about?'

She felt sure the heat in her cheeks was vibrant enough to light the entire room with her candescent embarrassment; that image of his body was going to be emblazoned upon her mind forever, she just knew it, and to make it worse she did not even know why she cared. She had seen men's chests before, after all, and while as she had never seen _Balthier's_ chest until this night, it was not, in a purely anatomic sense, any different from any other man's chest.

She actually yelped when Balthier's fingers brushed her bare forearm and she had to catch herself before she fell flat on her backside on the floor. She regained her balanced crouch before the bed to see just the faint wet gleam of Balthier's eyes as he withdrew his hand, once more lying on his side so he could face her.

'I asked what you wanted to talk about.'

He reminded her in perfectly reasonable, if slightly thick voice. In his half-asleep and almost trance-like state he seemed to have accepted her reason for being here without rancour. Very briefly Penelo contemplated how much nicer Balthier would be if permanently medicated.

'Umm,' Penelo twisted her hands together, fingernails scratching nervously at the backs of her hands, 'I….I just wanted to talk,' she trailed off wretchedly.

Really, she should have taken the time to compose a script and a strategy of campaign. It worried her that he would think her even more an idiot than he probably did already.

Balthier did not say a word against her however as he sighed and shifted in bed, tugging the pillow a little further down the bed before tugging the covers up higher over his body.

'Time travel,' he said abruptly and Penelo blinked at him.

'Time travel?'

'Hmm,' he reached out one languid arm and, apparently able to see just fine in the gloom, reached out to deftly brush his knuckles against her cheek in absent caress, 'I don't recommend it. The future is a disappointment; they don't even fly airships there.'

It occurred to Penelo that the reason Balthier had been so unconcerned with her presence in his bedroom was likely because his head was sky high in the clouds; it was even possible that he was dreaming awake, which would explain all this talk of time travel.

Penelo considered getting up and leaving him alone. He probably desperately needed a good nights rest if he was resorting to mind-altering substances and secret Viera remedies to fall asleep and it was unfair of her to be here when he didn't really know what was happening or what he was saying.

On the other hand………

…….on the other hand, this could be exactly what Fran meant when she spoke of getting what she wanted from Balthier while sleep was 'heavy on him'.

Had adrenaline not been crackling through her central nervous system and a strange excitement tingling in her lower extremities she might have been shocked and appalled at herself for taking advantage of him in this state.

'Why don't they fly airships Balthier?' she asked as she shifted across the carpeting to sit closer to the edge of the bed. She clasped his hand in hers as it dangled over the edge of the bed. His fingers were warm and lax as she twined them with her own.

He yawned hugely and burrowed his head further into his pillows, fingers idly flexing in her hand, 'Who knows? Ignorance, stupidity. People never change, it is really,' he yawned again, 'rather laughable.'

For a few seconds afterward Penelo simply watched him drift into a light doze once more as she argued with herself over whether she was really going to do what she was contemplating doing.

She reached out and gently shook his shoulder to wake him, 'Balthier why did you kiss me?'

'Hmm?' a befuddled frown tried to form on his brow but slipped away as sleep clawed at his consciousness, 'When?'

Penelo stroked her hand over his shoulder and forearm, enjoying the sensation, and she thought he must do as well as he sighed and relaxed, 'That first time, in Balfonheim, but I guess tonight as well, though we didn't really kiss. Why did you?'

'Hm, you have a pretty mouth.' Balthier opened his eyes abruptly and narrowed them in an attempt to gather his lethargic wits to him, 'should you really be here now?'

'Oh, it's fine.' She assured him easily and Balthier, very much under the influence of the sleeping draught, accepted this and let his eyes slide shut again. 'Do I really have a pretty mouth?'

She raised the fingers of her free hand to her mouth and brushed her lips thoughtfully, obscurely flattered with this compliment. She realised that although he had inferred by word and action that he found her attractive, Balthier had never really paid her any compliments as such.

Balthier however seemed to be fighting back, 'Penelo?' he blinked at her and she saw that he seemed a trifle more lucid than he had since first waking, 'Hmm, my dear, you really should not be in here.'

'It's fine, really.' She insisted and then, suddenly inspired, 'Vaan knows I'm here and he's fine with it.'

Balthier blinked, actually managing to be startled under the heavy veil of half-sleep that clouded his mind. 'He knows?'

It occurred to Penelo, quite abruptly and shockingly, that Balthier must care about Vaan in someway. That was the only explanation for why he seemed to always bring him up when alone with Penelo.

The revelation hit her full force that the reason Balthier always pulled away from her, even though she was hardly resisting him, was because he was guilty; guilty of indirectly hurting Vaan and, also, Penelo herself.

_Or perhaps he acts in your interests? Perhaps he fights his own nature for the betterment of yours?_ Fran's cryptic comment finally made sense to Penelo and she realised that maybe, just maybe, Balthier had been telling the truth all along when he had told her he did not have any intention of seducing her.

Perhaps the philanderer did not want to break the heart of a person he had come to know as more than just another pretty face?

A huge suffusion of warmth and happiness filled Penelo up from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair; he actually did care. Then a slightly more sobering, confusing thought stole a little of her giddy joy and replaced that bubbling effervescence with something darker and much more dangerously exciting.

He might not want to seduce her, but did her very presence here tonight mean that _she_ was trying to seduce him?

'Balthier?'

'Hm?'

He was sinking fast now and she didn't think she could keep him even partially awake and lucid for many moments more.

'What do you think of me?'

She squeezed the hand that she held captive in hers for emphasis and after a few seconds where she thought she'd lost him to slumber's embrace once and for all he roused himself enough to answer.

'You're very sweet.' The slurred response came disjointed but honest, 'I don't want to hurt you Penelo……..hmmm, you deserve better than that.'

Dropping back onto her haunches Penelo let his hand go and watched him slip completely into sleep. She wasn't sure how long she simply watched the ghost of dreams dance across his relaxed face as he slept and listened to the thunder in her own chest as her pulse beat out a staccato rhythm as fast as it was erratic.

Penelo finally understood what the wise Viera had meant all along. Sitting in this hot, close, dark room, Balthier asleep, peaceful and hardly in a position to stop her from taking anything she wanted, she found herself wondering who was the real thief, the jaded sky pirate, or the girl from the gutters of Low Town?

If only she knew what she wanted: the apprentice, the pirate, or the whole world?

Quiet and deliberate she rose to her feet and kicked off her loose sandals before gently, but firmly, pushing on Balthier's shoulders until, deep in slumber and pliable for the fact, he shifted back in the bed to make room for her.

Like a thief in the night she slipped between those covers and wound herself about his neck, pressing against his torso, as sleepily he cradled her in his arms. Penelo was unrepentant as she pressed her cheek to his warm chest, greedily stealing every last moment of intimacy she could with every heartbeat.

* * *

_There is no evil more potent than that committed by the good of heart; nor any wound deeper than that of a trust betrayed._

She woke to warmth and friction and lips bruising against her own. There was the scent of sleep sweat and the salty taste of another body on her tongue as she purred deep in her throat as questing fingers recognised the expanse of strong shoulders tapering into whippet lean waist and she was pressed down into the mattress.

Lips scored a scolding line down from her arched throat to the very neckline of her top as strong hands sought out the ties that bound her within her clothes. She didn't fight, she didn't shy away, instead Penelo wound herself about that other body like a limpet and refused to let go.

Deep down inside she knew it had been a picture perfect theft and the victim had never seen it coming.

* * *

_A/N: To all who have read and enjoyed this story; thank you greatly and I hope you have enjoyed reading this a fraction of as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Spikey44_


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